Peace Now: Eight outposts set up in West Bank last month by Nadav Shragai 1:10pm Sun Sep 1 '02 Eight new outposts were built in the West Bank in August, Peace Now reported. In addition to its alerts on new settlement activity, the peace organization is also mounting a campaign to compensate settlers who want to relocate within the pre-1967 Green Line borders. print article The new outposts listed by Peace Now include Alon Moreh Darom, 3.5 km southeast of Elon Moreh; Itamar Tzaphon, 1.5 km north of Itamar; Bracha Darom, 850 meters south of Bracha; Bracha 778, adjacent to Bracha; Beit Hagai Ma'arav, 300 meters west of the existing settlement; "Hakaron", a site where there is a restaurant, cafe and lookout; Givat Shvut Rahel, 1.5 km west of Shvut Rahel; and "Habayit Ha'Adom," 2.5 km east of Shvut Rahel. In addition, Peace Now cites a number of existings outposts that have been fortified with additional structures. Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer told the leaders of the Yesha Council of settlers last Thursday that he plans to continue dismantling illegal outposts. He explained that he would first consult with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and coalition leaders to determine whether this would require approval by the full cabinet. Yesha leaders announced that they would lobby members of Knesset to block what they called "the drive that has taken hold of the defense minister since [Labor Party challenger] Amram Mitzna's rise in the polls." Meanwhile, Peace Now has sent hundreds of letters offering to help settlers move out of the territories and has set up a voice mail box (057 352 352) where settlers can leave a message. The letter says: "We are turning to you out of a feeling of responsibility and shared fate" and notes that Peace Now has conducted research indicating that "many Israelis living in the territories are interested in returning to live in Israel, within the boundaries of the Green Line. "These citizens feel trapped and are unable to save themselves from the raging around them due to the collapse of property values on the settlements and lack of a long-term solution for housing and livelihood." Peace Now is planning to convene "experts from various fields," the letter continues, in an effort to pressure the government to address all aspects of compensation for those wishing to evacuate now. The Yesha Council said in response that the settlement movement, which today numbers some 220,000 people, "is stronger than Peace Now, than Arafat, than the rifles that Peace Now and the left transferred to Arafat and his cohorts." [commentTom: Yes, Yesha is strong, living ever more in ghetto's surrounded by all kind of fences in settlements not recognized by the rest of the world. It's the strongness of the ones that stopped confronting theirselves with other kinds of people because every confrontation could show them their extremely loneliness] www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.j... add your comments

Call to support the case of Angie Zelter (UK) against Settlers who attacked her. by ISM 3:47pm Sun Sep 1 '02 print comment Dear Friends, can you support the case against the settler who attacked me last year by being at the court case with placards (against settler violence, the neccesity for the rule of law, for an impartial judicial system, no peace without justice for all and a rule of law or more appropriate slogans) and leaflets/briefings about settler violence......... my lawyer from the PHRMG has said that having people in the court listening to the case would be useful. And if any of you have press contacts that would cover it that would be good too. I have attached a copy of the statement I made at the time so you can understand what the case is about. This first hearing has been put off several times and I think it is only with the support of the UK Consulate that it has gone so far..... The first court hearing will take place at the Court of the First Instance, Russian Compound, Jerusalem on Wednesday 4 September at 11.00 am. The name of the judge is Judge DOTAN and the case file number is 2623/2002. Can you pass this round the Israeli peacemovement please as I am new to court support and do not know who to contact (if any of oyu can send me a list of emails of who to contact that would be good for next time) - thanks. thanks, Angie. PS. Anyone wishing to contact me can do so from Monday night on o2-6715324 or on my mobile on 055-376-204. I can be contacted on the email below until Sunday afternoon. Angie Zelter, IWPS-Hares, Salfit, Palestine. Tel:- +972-(0)9-2516-644. Mob:-+972- (55-376-204(0 Email:- iwps@palnet.com Website:- www.womenspeacepalestine.org REPORT OF ASSAULT ON ANGIE ZELTER, UK CITIZEN This report is being written up at 6.10 p.m. Wednesday 29th August 2001 by Angie Zelter of Valley Farmhouse, East Runton, Cromer, Norfolk. NR27 9PN, UK. I promise that it is a true and honest account as accurate as I can remember and that it was made as soon as I reached the CPT house after leaving the police-station. Today, at about 12 noon, whilst with the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT), in Hebron, in the Old City, we received a call of some trouble with settlers in the Avraha Avino area where Gross Square meets the Old City. Dianne Roe (a full time member of CPT) and I went to the area reaching it within approximately 5 minutes. I heard shouting and saw soldiers in vehicles and on the ground and a group of settlers with stones. I saw a group of settler girls around the ages of 10-15 with some boys and some adults armed with stones who, when they saw us, screamed at us ‘Nazis’, ‘Nazis’. I then saw a girl pick up a stone and throw it at a Palestinian man who I later found out was named Saadi Suliman Al Karaka and who was 75 years old. I was taking photos all the time. I then saw he was covered in blood and went up to help. A soldier was helping him and another Palestinian man was trying to aid him too. Another soldier kept trying to make them move away and seemed more concerned with getting him out of sight than in helping him. I asked one to get an ambulance for him and the soldier said no. I took photos of his injuries. He was bleeding from the head and from the neck. Dianne then stayed with the man to take his name and try and help get him medical aid and I went back to witness the violence being perpetrated by the settlers against the Palestinians who were just trying to set up their shops and get in food as the curfew was mercifully lifted for a while and they had to get supplies before being imprisoned again in their homes. I could see a group of around 15 or so, mainly female, settler children in their early/mid teens screaming and throwing rocks. I asked the soldiers to stop the violence and I tried to appeal to some of the kids to stop the violence. I then noticed an armed man in a white shirt with a long black beard and glasses and said ‘Shalom … do you speak English, please’ and asked him to try and stop the kids throwing rocks because people were getting hurt and tried to explain I had just witnessed an old man being badly hurt. He started screaming at me ‘You fascist whore’, ‘fucking Nazi’, ‘Go home’, the ‘Christians murdered the Jews’, he spoke English really well and just kept screaming loads of abuse at me. I was trying to take photos of the violence going on all around and also asking him to try to stop it rather than letting it go on, he screamed that he had to suffer while the filthy Arabs took over his land and how he couldn’t go certain places because of them, how they should all be killed…. This may have taken only a couple of minutes but as he continued to scream at me more kids were gathering around and shouting out ‘Nazi, Nazi’ and he got angrier and angrier and hatred was streaming out of him. One of his hands was clenched on his gun which was held slung in front of him and it was jerking up and down. He suddenly came at me ‘to teach me’ and hit me on the right hand side of the head. I flinched and shut my eyes and did not see which hand he hit me with. The violent assault continued and he grabbed my camera which was round my neck and which I held in my hands. I tried to keep hold of it but he wrested it out of my hands and over my ears and dashed it to the ground and stamped on it over and over again, screaming. By this time I was starting to cry from shock at seeing the old man hit with the rock and from all the hate and violence I was experiencing from the armed settler. I just stood there with my hands open, looking at him with tears streaming down my face, trying to stop crying but not managing. Unfortunately my weakness seemed to make him and the kids even angrier. By this time the kids were closing in with taunts and I was really scared. Soldiers were looking on from their cars, like they had the whole time. Luckily Dianne had arrived back and so had some policemen and they came up. I asked them to arrest the settler and tried to explain what he had done. He suddenly turned into a nice smiling calm man as if nothing had happened. But I pointed to the camera on the ground in pieces and to the kids who were taking out the film and exposing it to the light so the evidence of their violence could not be seen. The policemen saw the film in the hands of a girl and the smashed camera. He handed Dianne some pieces. I asked the police that they be fingerprinted. I asked the police to arrest the man and to be told his name. He answered some questions the policeman asked him I could not understand them. It looked like he was denying everything I had said. He sauntered away and sat at the settler table and chairs. I asked again that he be arrested for hitting me, spitting at me, shouting obscenities at me and for destroying my camera and film. I asked to make a formal complaint. The police arrested him and put him in a car. I asked again to be able to make a formal complaint. I was eventually put into a car with a Palestinian man, who spoke English and told me had seen the settler attack me. He was waiting to go to the police-station to make a complaint about the settlers having stolen his keys. Dianne got in too and we were all taken to a minor police point at which I saw the settler man. I phoned the UK Consul. After a while a settler came up and took photos of me and the Palestinian man who had had his keys stolen. The policeman asked Dianne if she had seen the man attack me and she said no. The Palestinian man said he had seen everything but the policeman ignored him. He later informed me that the policeman warned him not to make a statement. I did not urge the man to make a statement as I knew from previous accounts I had heard from Palestinians that he might suffer violence and revenge attacks from the settlers or soldiers if he did and I did not want to put him in danger. I was put in a police van with a screaming settler girl of around 16 and the policeman and a police-woman. We were driven to the main Hebron police station where I was told to go into a waiting room. As we were getting out the policeman said to me in good English but in a rather ominous manner, ‘Do you remember who I am?’ I replied that I was sorry but no. He then pulled his dark glasses off and said did I recognise him now. I said no although he did look vaguely familiar. He said he had been the one that arrested me at the Orient House demonstration on Friday 10th August. If so then he was implicated in allowing the Palestinian to be beaten up so badly about which I later made a report to the UK Consul and about which the police refused to take a statement from me at the Muscovia Compound where I was charged after having been arrested and beaten for peacefully demonstrating against the military take-over of the Palestinian Diplomatic Centre. I simply said to him politely that his conduct on this case would show whether he was a fair and honest man or not. In the Hebron police station I was taken to a room where I met the man with the stolen keys who translated the story of another old man present in the room, who apparently had been waiting to make a complaint all morning. When he had opened up his shop that morning a gang of settlers had entered his shop and looted it. He was consistently ignored by the police as they came by. After ten or so minutes the other Palestinian man who had had the keys stolen was taken away. After a further half hour or so of waiting I went outside and kept asking people if they spoke English and was finally able to ask that my statement be taken. By such persistence and because I was an International I was then taken to an office where I saw the armed settler sitting. I was taken into a room nearby by the policeman who had recognised me and politely asked that the door be shut so that the settler not hear what we were saying. After a bit more discussion in Hebrew the policeman withdrew and the door was closed and I began my interview with a very polite and professional policeman whom I later found out was called Yedidia Alush. He asked me to tell my story and he listened and asked a few questions. He then took some paper and asked me more questions and took down my story, sentence by sentence. I told it more or less as I have above. He signed each page but I did not sign as I could not read Hebrew and he said he had explained this at the bottom of each page. I suggested to the policeman that he take fingerprints from the camera as he would undoubtedly find the settlers fingerprints all over them. He put them in a labelled brown envelope. I also showed him the white spittle all over my clothes and the camera case from where the man had spat at me he had actually foamed at the mouth, but the policeman said it would be too hard to do that and in any case I had enough evidence against him. After taking my statement he asked me a few questions like had I known this man before I said I had never seen him before. The policeman who interviewed me was called Yedidia Alush at the Hebron Police Station and it was 2.15p.m. by the end of the statement taking. He gave me a piece of paper in Hebrew with his name and rank and told me that the Case Number was No 3 of todays date (No 3 of 29/9/01). When I asked for a copy of the statement he had made on my behalf he said that was not possible. When I asked for the name of the settler he also said he could not give it to me in case I threatened the settlers family, although he did say this was not likely but those were the rules. I asked for confirmation that the police would press charges against the settler and he answered that probably they would and that the man would likely appear in the Jerusalem court then next day. I said if the police did not press charges would I be able to take out a private prosecution and he said yes. I was then let out. It took me several hours to return home as there was much firing and shelling and the taxis were scared to take me back to the old city. At one point I had to take shelter from the firing in a shop near the cemetery until the shooting died down enough to return to the CPT house where I am making this statement now. www.womenspeacepalestine.org add your comments