Israeli Settlers Assault Peace Volunteers

[PatrickHenry]

The first vicious assualt occurred on September 30, 2004:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...ct8.html?sub=AR

A District{Washington, DC} resident working with a Christian organization in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is recuperating from injuries she received after being attacked as she escorted Palestinian schoolchildren past an Israeli settlement. Kim Lamberty, 44, said that she and another American, Christopher Brown of San Francisco, were attacked Sept. 30 south of Hebron by five masked men who were armed with a chain and bat. Lamberty suffered a broken arm and bruised knee, and Brown was hospitalized for several days with cracked ribs and a punctured lung. Lamberty said the men also stole her passport, cell phone and cash. The five children ran away during the attack and were not injured. Lamberty and Brown, 39, are volunteers with the Chicago-based Christian Peacemakers Team, an organization that sends workers trained in nonviolent intervention into war zones. Palestinians had asked the group to provide escorts for children who walk to school on a dirt path between the Israeli settlement of Ma'on and a settlement outpost called Ma'on Ranch. An outpost is a temporary camp, usually consisting of trailers, that is erected by settlers seeking to expand their presence in the occupied territories. In a telephone interview from Jerusalem, Lamberty said the five assailants came running out of the trees lining the path. She said they tripped her and "were beating me while I was on ground." Afterward, "I saw the group go back through the grove of trees and into Ma'on Ranch," Lamberty wrote in an account of the incident that she provided to the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem. She also wrote that a security guard from the Ma'on settlement told her later that the pair had been attacked "because we had upset the balance of power between the settlement and Palestinians." "At no time did the police search the trees to find these guys," she said in the interview. "It did not happen." Charles F. Hunter, public affairs spokesman for the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, said: "We obviously are very concerned about this attack on American citizens. We would hope there would be a thorough investigation into it and that those responsible would be dealt with appropriately . . . and that there would not be a repetition of such incidents." "Israel's law enforcement authorities view this incident with utmost severity," said David Siegel, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington. They "are conducting a full and intensive investigation. We are doing everything we can to get to the bottom of this case and prosecute those responsible." Robert Pelletreau, co-director of Search for Common Ground in the Middle East, said in an phone interview from Jerusalem that the incident reflected "an atmosphere now where there's quite a lot of violence and quite a lot of uncertainty" in the absence of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Mark Frey, administrative coordinator at Christian Peacemakers Team, said that the organization's volunteers, who began working with Palestinians in June 1995, had been threatened in person and in written messages but that the attack on Lamberty and Brown "is the most severe assault we've experienced." Lamberty, who has a master's degree in theology from Washington Theological Union, has been working in the West Bank since August. She was director of social concerns ministry at St. John the Baptist Church in Silver Spring for eight years. Her husband, Paul Magno, is director of outreach to the poor at St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Northwest Washington. Lamberty said she decided to join the peace teams because "after 9/11 . . . I started to feel like we were facing a situation where many in the Muslim world really hate the United States, and it seemed to me a lot of that was because of what was happening in Palestine." Lamberty said she plans to finish her original three-month commitment, returning home in mid- November.

Then the same thing happened again last Saturday.

http://www.cpt.org/urgent_actions/attackur...rgentaction.htm

CPT HEBRON URGENT ACTION: Tell Israeli government to stop settler attacks on Palestinian schoolchildren, CPTers and other international accompaniers CPTnet, October 9, 2004 For the second time in ten days, masked men from the Ma'on settlement have attacked internationals who have accompanied Palestinians to and from school. The September 30, 2004 attack resulted in a broken knee and arm for CPTer Kim Lamberty and a punctured lung for CPTer Chris Brown. This afternoon, settlers attacked CPTers Diane Janzen and Diana Zimmerman and Amnesty International field researcher Donatella Rovera with wooden sticks and then attacked a volunteer from Operation Dove, an Italian peace group, breaking his arm (he was videotaping the assault.) Settlers from Ma'on have been trying to drive out the Palestinian residents of this remote area in the Hebron District for years, physically assaulting them, killing their livestock and burning their crops. Because settler harassment of Palestinian children on their way to school in al-Tuwani had become progressively more vicious, CPT, along with Operation Dove and Taayush, an Israeli peace group, set up an accompaniment project beginning on September 12, 2004. CPT is asking its supporters to fax or call the Israeli ambassadors to Canada and the U.S., saying they are aware of the attacks on the CPTers. (Canadians, note that Diane Janzen is a Canadian citizen.) Ask the following questions: *Why are the Israeli police not protecting Palestinian children traveling to school in al-Tuwani? Note that harassment of the children has been ongoing and that the police appear to be choosing not to prevent further settler attacks on international volunteers? *What steps is the Israeli government taking to prevent these attacks? *Why do the soldiers and settler security personnel prevent the children from walking on the road near Ma'on settlement to get to school, ignoring the permission the children have received from the Israeli District Coordinating Officer and the Israeli police to walk on that road? * Does the Ambassador understand how allowing settlers to attack schoolchildren and internationals committed to nonviolence damages Israel's reputation? People may also choose to fax Ariel Sharon, noting that he has closely aligned himself with settlers in the past, and asking him what steps he is taking to prevent further attacks. Note that he has ordered one of the Ma'on "outpost" settlements from which the attackers came demolished to appease the Bush administration. Contacts Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Haim Divon (Ottawa) Fax: 613-237-8865 Phone: 613-567-6450 Israeli Ambassador to the United States: Danny Ayalon (Washington,DC) fax: 202-364-5607 Phone:202-364-5500 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Fax: 011-972-2-651-2631

This kind of thing must be dealt with by the Israelis if they wish to remain in the family of civilized nations...

[giuliano]

israelis cannot be at fault in conflict with palestinians....

does not compute. does not compute.

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