A settler tosses wine at a Palestinian woman on Shuhada Street in Hebron. The approach of some settlers towards neighboring Palestinians, especially around Nablus in the north and Hebron in the south, has often been one of contempt and violence. (more…)

“Shut up or I will f*** you,” a Christian Peacemaker Team observer quoted an Israeli soldier yelling at the mother of a boy bound in military custody near Hebron on Monday. (more…)

Settlers threatened on Friday to set the West Bank city of Hebron on fire if Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak carries out a recent decision to open a street into the Jabber neighborhood. (more…)

Palestinians families who suffered property damage during riots that followed 2008 evacuation of ‘disputed house’ to receive total of $63,000 restitution payments. (more…)

I saw a child, who looked about twelve years old, and was dressed in white, was wearing a skullcap and had long, curly hair. He opened the door on the driver’s side and slammed it shut. Then he bent over and picked up a big rock. I was afraid he would throw it at us, and my daughter began to shout and asked the driver to get going quickly, before the child throws the rock at us. The soldier was still standing on the side of the ambulance, and put his hand on the window. Then the child threw the rock at the rear door of the ambulance, breaking the window, and it fell on the bed inside the ambulance. It weighed about three kilograms. Luckily, Hanaa and I were sitting on the seat and were not injured, but small pieces of glass scattered on my clothes. I began to shake in fear and to cry. I shouted and then I was just too overwhelmed to speak. My daughter and the paramedic tried to calm me. As they did that, another rock, a small one, flew into the ambulance, landing near the big rock. This one, too, didn’t hit me. The soldier standing next to us did not stop the child from throwing the stones, and let him run away. He didn’t do anything. (more…)

I watched them returning and saw a young settler stop and look around. I was afraid that he intended to do something, and right then, while I was thinking that, he picked up a stone and threw it at the car of my uncle Muhammad Nabih D’ana, who lives next-door. His car, a 1981 Subaru, was parked opposite his house. I saw and heard the rear window of the car shatter. I shouted, in Hebrew, to the settler, “What are you doing here?” Then, the soldiers aimed their rifles at my house, and one of them ordered me to shut up and stay inside. Other settlers began to throw stones at parked cars. I heard the stones strike the cars. I watched the settlers as they passed by my house, and then I went to the front door and continued to shout at them. I heard my uncle Muhammad D’ana and other neighbors shouting from their houses, but nobody went outside. (more…)

His “crime” was trying to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins from Um El Hir in the South Hebron region. These Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services and are continuously harassed by Jewish settlers and the military – two groups that have united to expropriate Palestinian land and that clearly have received the government’s blessing to do so. (more…)

The Jerusalem District Court on Monday sentenced Shahar Butbika, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing a Palestinian youth from Hebron, to eight and a half years in prison. Fellow officer Dennis Alhazov, who documented the incident and was convicted of similar offenses, was sentenced to five and a half years in jail. (more…)

So kidnapping and murdering a Palestinian teenager by forcing him out of a speeding vehicle only warrants an 8.5 year prison sentence in Israel?

Of fine, it’s so rare that Israel prosecutes any of its soldiers for similar crimes… So I won’t even get into the murders and beatings committed on a daily basis against the occupied population. But the message sent by the Jewish state is clear: killing Palestinians is perfectly acceptable – just not in ways that arouse too much negative publicity.

Being pregnant, I couldn’t run fast. After about one hundred meters, the settlers caught me. One of them hit me in my right arm and left leg with his stick. The other settler threw a stone at me, which hit me in the left leg. Then one of them pushed me, and I fell onto some thorns. My arm and leg hurt a lot. When I fell, the two settlers left me and ran toward the farmers and other shepherds. I remained there, crying. I was in terrible pain. (more…)

A group of extremist settlers attacked on Tuesday a number of Palestinian homes in the southern West Bank city of Hebron causing excessive damage and terrifying the residents, especially the children. (more…)

Hebron is another controversial area where settlements have received substantial tax-exempt gifts from America. According to IRS records, the Hebron Fund donated $860,637 in 2005 and $967,954 in 2006 for “social and educational well-being”; the fund’s online mission statement makes clear this is for Israeli settlers inside the city. The Hebron settlement of Kiryat Arba received $730,000 in 2006 from a group called American Friends of Yeshiva High School of Kiryat Arba. (more…)

Reservists marked their last night stationed in the southern Hebron Hills by damaging confiscated Palestinian vehicles, their replacements told Haaretz on Monday. The reserve battalion in question was stationed at a small base near the Shekef settlement, and spent three weeks in the south Hebron Hills. They were responsible primarily for patrolling the green line. On their last night at the base, the reservists got drunk and vandalized some of the vehicles they had confiscated from Palestinian drivers, for transporting passengers who lacked permits to enter Israel, soldiers told Haaretz. (more…)

An officer who fought in the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza and was slated to receive a citation for his performance was arrested recently on suspicion of assaulting a Palestinian girl in the Hebron area, Ynet has learned. (more…)

Documents signed in strange places – and crooked deals – are not unusual in the lucrative and clandestine trade in Palestinian-owned land. Another recent challenge to a settler land deal in the town of Hebron involved forged documents, and a third revolved around Israeli businessmen who set up a notary with a prostitute, filmed their encounter, and then blackmailed the man into signing a sales document in Cyprus. (more…)

The settlers call this the post-Gaza “price-tag policy”, whereby any attempt by the Israeli authorities to evacuate any settlement is resisted not only by confrontation with the evacuators but also by violent attacks elsewhere against Palestinians and the army. Such tactics have recently led to injury and extensive damage to Palestinian property. Two Israeli army officers were also hurt by settler militants.(more…)

The settlers continued their attack for about two hours. My children and I stayed in one room. They children were terrified and we were all crying. We heard the sound of the windows breaking and of the water tanks being punctured. Flames spread into the house and we had to put them out with blankets, because the settlers had damaged our water system. (more…)

Extremist settler groups currently involved in violent confrontations with Palestinians in the centre of Hebron have chosen their next battleground, this time outside the West Bank.

A far-right group know as the Jewish National Front, closely associated with the Hebron settlers, is preparing to march through one of the main Arab towns in northern Israel. The march, approved by the Supreme Court back in October, is scheduled to take place on December 15, the group announced this week.

The police are expecting to deploy thousands of officers to prevent trouble, and have limited the number of Front members participating to 100. The march will not enter the heart of the city, say police, though it is not yet clear whether Front members will be allowed to carry the guns most have been issued as settlers.

The Front says it will wave Israeli flags in what the group has dubbed a demonstration of “Jewish Pride” through Umm al-Fahm, home to nearly 45,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel. (more…)

The dark-haired 22-year-old in black T-shirt, blue jeans and red Crocs is understandably hesitant as he sits at a picnic table in the incongruous setting of a beauty spot somewhere in Israel. We know his name and if we used it he would face a criminal investigation and a probable prison sentence.

The birds are singing as he describes in detail some of what he did and saw others do as an enlisted soldier in Hebron. And they are certainly criminal: the incidents in which Palestinian vehicles are stopped for no good reason, the windows smashed and the occupants beaten up for talking back – for saying, for example, they are on the way to hospital; the theft of tobacco from a Palestinian shopkeeper who is then beaten “to a pulp” when he complains; the throwing of stun grenades through the windows of mosques as people prayed. And worse.

The young man left the army only at the end of last year, and his decision to speak is part of a concerted effort to expose the moral price paid by young Israeli conscripts in what is probably the most problematic posting there is in the occupied territories. Not least because Hebron is the only Palestinian city whose centre is directly controlled by the military, 24/7, to protect the notably hardline Jewish settlers there. He says firmly that he now regrets what repeatedly took place during his tour of duty. (more…)