A comment on Mondoweiss in regards to the killing of the settler family. Interesting insight

mariapalestina March 12, 2011 at 2:04 pm

The deaths of these innocent children can never be justified, any more than the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian children in Gaza and all over Palestine can be justified. One major difference is that the Palestinian children were all living legally with their families on land that belonged to them and to Palestine. Settler children are being used as potential human shields by parents who insist on living illegally on land that doesn’t belong to them. I wish this latest violence had not occurred. I am saddened to know that this one Palestinian was finally driven to commit such a horrendous act.

I know some of these Itamar settlers, or at least I have personally experienced their hatred and violence. The lives of local villagers had been hell for years, and by the fall of 2003 every single family in the tiny hamlet of Yanoun had fled after months of nightly raids and physical attacks by Itamar settlers. Wells had been poisoned, electrical generators destroyed. Some Israeli Jewish peace activists were dismayed that the settlers had been able to do what the Irgun and Stern gangs had done in 1948: force every single inhabitant of a Palestinian village to flee. So these Israelis, along with volunteers from ISM, promised that if the villagers would return to Yanoun they would be protected from the settlers. That’s where I came in. With a small group of volunteers I was sent to Yanoun village in October 2002 to help the handful of Palestinians who had dared return to harvest their few olive trees. On a Sunday morning we were attacked by a gang from Itamar. After they cornered and isolated me I was beaten and robbed by armed thugs screaming that this was their land and that they would kill me. They kicked me to the ground and beat me with sticks and rifle butts. They stole everything I had with me: passport, plane ticket, money, camera, credit cards, jacket. IDF soldiers parked in a jeep close by did nothing to intervene. Later I and my three fellow victims were told by the chief of police at Ariel Settlement, which controls (or supposedly controls) Itamar, that these thugs are well known to the police for their violence against Palestinian villagers in the area close to the Itamar settlement.

Anyone who wants to understand some of what the Palestinians in the area have been suffering at the hands of these Itamar crazies should read the attached report of interviews with Yanoun villagers. It’s a fascinating and beautifully illustrated piece which gives wonderful insight to the suffering endured by all the Palestinian residents of Yanoun since the creation of the Itamar settlement. The piece also includes reference to the incident in which I was personally victimized.

http://www.kirkensnodhjelp.no/Documents/Kirkens%20N%C3%B8dhjelp/Geografiske%20filer/Midt%C3%B8sten/Living%20with%20settlers.pdf

So when I hear talk of legalizing existing settlements as part of any peace process I know this would never work. Settlers like those at Itamar will never accept that Palestinians have the right to live in Palestine. All settlers will have to leave the land and return to Israel for there to be any kind of peace.