Israeli Settlers Set Fire To Palestinian Fields, Stone Cars During Rampage

NABLUS, West Bank — More than 30 Israeli settlers, some of them on horseback, set fire to fields and olive trees and stoned Palestinian cars during a rampage in the West Bank on Monday, a Palestinian official said. Two Palestinians were lightly injured.

The settlers went on the rampage near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank to protest the Israeli army's removal of an unauthorized settlement outpost in the area.

Ghassan Daglas, a Nablus municipality official, said the riot began with 10 settlers on horseback and grew to a mob of 30 south of the city, where the settlers attacked Palestinians who passed in cars.

Daglas said smoke from the burning fields blanketed the area, but no houses were damaged. Daglas said Israeli forces tried to stop the rampaging settlers.

Israel's paramilitary border police force said it arrested one settler.

Israel has pledged to the U.S. to remove more than two dozen tiny, unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank, but has taken little action against them. Hardline settlers commonly attack Palestinian property as retaliation for demolished or evacuated settlements – a tactic they call the "price tag."

The Palestinians oppose all settlement activity on land they claim for a future state, and the U.S., which considers settlements obstacles to peace, is demanding a freeze on all settlement construction in the West Bank.

Israel has rejected the U.S. calls for a settlement freeze, saying existing settlements must be allowed to expand to account for "natural growth" in their populations.

Some 280,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 180,000 Israelis living in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. The Palestinians claim both areas, which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

Comments

[AtheistUS]

01:14 PM on 07/22/2009

I agree. This is also not just a good gesture, but really a necessity. A government devoted to the country would certainly do this.

[AtheistUS]

01:18 PM on 07/22/2009

sorry, this is supposed to be reply to who38 three pages back...

[StephCaster]

01:31 PM on 07/21/2009

I seem to recall an old word that describes this sort of behavior... what was it again?

Oh, yes, I remember now: "pogrom"

[blueskybigstar]

11:50 AM on 07/21/2009

Isreal, your people are out of control. Out of respect to your ancestors and their sacrifices, you need to make sure that you treat others with the respect that you would treat yourselves. This is very, very sad indeed.

[blueskybigstar]

11:49 AM on 07/21/2009

Israel,

[yankees]

11:08 AM on 07/21/2009

And where were the reports of the missiles fired into Israel last week or last month? Not in the Post cause it was not news, nobody got hurt just like this incident.

[MemoryAlpha]

11:42 AM on 07/21/2009

Query:
And how much farmland was razed by those missiles relative to pogroms by Israeli settlers?

[StephCaster]

01:34 PM on 07/21/2009

"And where were the reports of the missiles fired into Israel last week or last month?"

Nice, generic rebuttal for any criticism past, present or future. Don't even need to read the articles, just google for Israel, and past in the comments section...

[Freenation]

09:15 PM on 07/20/2009

it is still not too late to get back $3 billions which we gave to these 'settlers gone wild'...lot of unemployed will appreciate it.....

[Ex-Liberal]

07:31 PM on 07/20/2009

And how many palestinians died in those blazes? None? Zero? Zilch? Nada?

See? Just like Hamas rockets. No big deal! Right, L-tards?

[EGB]

08:10 PM on 07/20/2009

Ordinarily, I just let non-sequiturs like this go. But the raising of the Hamas bogeyman in defense of a clear act of terrorism by a threatening group of violent religious fanatics (a.k.a. settlers) is over the top. The issue here is not 'who's worse,' it's that these violent elements are coddled by the Israeli police because everyone is afraid of them and that these are the famous 'settlers' so often discussed these days and because they are a paramilitary presence in occupied lands. No matter how much the Israeli right repeats that settlements are not the issue (by fiat, of course), in fact they are. Today we have seen one reason why, even if it was buried at the bottom of a page in small print.
HuffPo should research and publish an article on the violent, ultra-orthodox crazies who, I feel, constitute the greatest threat to Israel. It is not just that they are mullah-like in their fanaticism, they are extremely influential politically. This is a little-known, serious matter.

[gakabani]

08:59 PM on 07/20/2009

Thank you! Excellent point.

[Ex-Liberal]

10:02 PM on 07/20/2009

I wasn't raising the issue of "who's worse."

Hamas rocket attacks were continuously minimized by people like you because they were deemed as not very lethal. Remember? I'm only doing the same.

Nobody was killed in these fires, so like Hamas rocket attacks, they should be minimized and/or disregarded. They are no big deal. See how both sides can play that mor.onic game? A mo.ronic game, by the way, invented by you Israel haters.

So non-sequitor indeed.

[commarcos]

08:35 PM on 07/20/2009

Was that an attempt at relevance? I am sure your sitting there with a smirk on your face thinking you made some great intellectual point. I am sorry to let you know that your comment makes no sense at all. If you would like to give it another chance, I think we will allow you one do over. Just make it worth it this time and try not to sound like a ranting lunatic.

[who38]

12:20 AM on 07/21/2009

It was a deflection. What else would you expect from someone with an IDF assignment?

[DC]

03:53 AM on 07/21/2009

Actually, his post was quite good and he made a point that some Israeli politicians have even admitted -- that the greatest real threat to the future of Israel are the extremists within Israeli society. Remember, the murder of an Israeli Prime Minister is celebrated every year by some in Israel.

Think about that and what it means.

[jozzie]

07:30 PM on 07/20/2009

The ultra-orthodox in Israel are on an unstoppable path to becoming that country's majority due to their extremely high birthrates compared to secular Israelis.

Israel will be overtaken by this sort of extremism in another generation or so. This is not good news.

[zaz33]

08:09 PM on 07/20/2009

jozzie - And moderate Jews are leaving Israel.

However

Palistinian birth rates are 3 to 1 more than Israeli Jews.

[betz55]

07:25 PM on 07/20/2009

The world is growing tired of being blackmailed by a country that has an illegal nuclear arsenal capable of unimaginable destruction, a country which has no regard for international law, Geneva conventions, apartheid behavior, or their own terrorism with just under 500,000 thugs holding world peace hostage.

Israel has no problem with waging war in Lebanon, Syria, getting the US to wage it's war in Iraq and trying to get us to wage their war in Iran, Gaza and killing thousands there but is finding it "difficult" to evacuate outposts, and cannot stand up to these fanatical settler terrorists ?

Imagine an Israel without settlements. It would be an Israel that could focus on its own problems at home. It could focus on improving public health, education, and scientific research, and not squander its energy on defending a doomed enterprise.

Its armed forces could focus on defending the state itself, not on figuring out how to rescue settlers (some of whom have physically attacked the soldiers) who choose to live in the midst of an Arab population that hates them.

It would not be dispatching its eighteen-year olds to police West Bank cities or blocking needed supplies from getting into Gaza.

Let's put it to vote and see how many Americans want to continue supporting the world's biggest welfare client, Israel ?

Bring in legislation to ban all bilateral trade with Israel until its government complies with international law, the UNSC and the Geneva Conventions.

Stop all aid to Israel.

[Lozange]

09:18 AM on 07/21/2009

Refreshingly candid comment. Thanks.

[philoffal]

06:03 PM on 07/20/2009

Shattering a national myth

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html

[roybattyjunior]

03:40 PM on 07/20/2009

Israel has a very ominous and growing problem with its own religious fanatics. And now they have serious representation in their government with Avigdor Lieberman.

What's strange is that these fanatics that claim this land as their own are mostly from Russia and Brooklyn. They have only just recently set foot in this part of the world.

The Arabs have been there for thousands of years.

[JessWonderin]

11:32 AM on 07/21/2009

EXACTLY . . . bringing in landless FOREIGN occupiers to usurp the peoples living there . . .

[who38]

12:08 PM on 07/21/2009

Isn't that what colonialists do?

[Fentwin]

03:38 PM on 07/20/2009

It seems Israel has forgotten an important lesson about how to be a barbarian....

Pillage, THEN burn.

[Morocco]

03:35 PM on 07/20/2009

This song by Outlandish, written by an American Palestinian, captured the situation Palestinians face every single day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_r6B1SC_YY&feature=channel_page

[CigarGod]

09:06 AM on 07/21/2009

Thanks.
Great contribution.
Have a cigar.

[gbrooks]

08:38 PM on 07/22/2009

Wow. Very moving.

[Maanu]

03:19 PM on 07/20/2009

I can't help but think of the Israeli settlers as analogous to "house ne groes", semites used as pawns on the frontlines in the battle between the West & the East. They're getting a raw deal, and they signed up for it. It's unfortunate.

[MemoryAlpha]

03:22 PM on 07/20/2009

Observation:
Settlers have much more in common with plantation owners in the American South than with slaves.

[who38]

12:22 AM on 07/21/2009

Thank you. At best, they are Simon Legrees, ready to beat and rape people to keep them in line.

[raaf]

03:17 PM on 07/20/2009

I'm sure if Ahmadinejad supporters did something like that in Iran it would be the top story at Huff. Now it's somewhere near the bottom.