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Jewish settlers holding his machine gun in one of the illegal settlements in West Bank |
American
security guards draw weapons in defense in rare clash near illegal outpost;
incident ends without injuries
Times
of Israel
Several
settlers on Friday hurled rocks at members of staff from Jerusalem’s US
Consulate near an illegal West Bank outpost, leading American security
personnel to draw their weapons, Israeli media reported. The clash ended
without injuries, though light damage was caused to consulate cars.
Consulate
staff were touring near the Adei Ad outpost, northeast of Ramallah, along with
a number of Palestinians from the nearby village of Turmus Ayya. According to
Ynet News, villagers said thousands of olive tree saplings in their lands had
been uprooted by local settlers in recent days. A number of villagers with US
citizenship invited consulate staff to view the damage up close.
When
the American visitors arrived and exited their vehicles, a number of settlers
pelted them with rocks. This led security guards to draw their weapons. The
consulate staff promptly left the scene, ending the incident without anyone
being hurt. The rocks caused some light damage to consulate cars.
Police
confirmed the incident to Ynet, and noted the tour had not been coordinated
with Israeli authorities.
There
was no comment from the US Embassy.
A
senior PA official, Ziad Abu Ein, died in a protest in Turmus Ayya against Adei
Ad last month. Turmus Ayya residents say the residents of the illegal
settlement are encroaching on their lands.
Abu
Ein’s death — which Israeli coroners have said was likely caused by a heart
attack, but which Palestinians have blamed on soldier violence during the
demonstration — caused severe tensions between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority.
Settlers
have often been accused of vandalism against Palestinian farmers in the West
Bank — particularly of slow-growing olive trees. Palestinians say some settler
groups use violence and intimidation to discourage them from working their
lands.
Though
police investigate such accusations, they rarely end in indictments.
In
October 2013, an Israeli NGO accused police of “miserably failing” to protect
Palestinian olive groves in the West Bank from vandalism, producing just a handful
of indictments in over 200 documented cases of tree destruction over the past
nine years.
According
to Yesh Din, a human rights watchdog active in the West Bank, out of 211
complaints filed with the Judea and Samaria District police for cases of alleged
olive tree vandalism documented by the organization between 2005 and 2013, only
four investigations ended in indictment. That, claimed Yesh Din, was a “failure
rate” of 97.4 percent, given that the vast majority of cases were closed either
due to police’s inability to locate the perpetrators or for “lack of evidence.”
This
last October two Israelis were arrested in the West Bank after a group attacked
a Palestinian family picking olives at the start of harvest season.
There
are some 10 million olive trees in the West Bank and the crop is a critical
sector of the Palestinian economy, employing 100,000 workers and raising up to
$100 million (70 million euros) each year.
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