Jewish settlers attack Christian peace monitors in Hebron
-22/04/06
A group of Jewish
Jewish settlers attack Christian peace monitors in Hebron
-22/04/06
A group of Jewish settlers have attacked five international workers, including members of two church-sponsored monitoring teams, who were escorting Palestinian girls from a school in the divided West Bank city of Hebron.
Shouting “We will kill you!,” some 15 young Jewish settlers threw stones and kicked the foreign activists, who sustained minor injuries, mostly bruises, according to a spokesperson for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).
“They were escorting girls from a school which is directly opposite the Tel Rumeida Jewish settlement. The monitors take the schoolgirls to and from school each day,” said EAPPI spokesperson Gemma Abbs. “They (the settlers) were waiting for them to come out of the school when the incident happened.”
Abbs said about 15 young men disembarked from a bus at the settlement and immediately began stoning the fleeing monitors. “They threw stones at their backs as they tried to run away.”
The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), an initiative of the World Council of Churches in agreement with the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, identified its two accompaniers as Karin Laier from Germany and Tore Ottesen from Norway.
Three other activists working with the International Solidarity Movement and Christian Peacemaker Teams also were among those attacked, witnesses said. Among them was a 79-year-old woman who was kicked by the mob, Gemma Abbs added.
The Israeli authorities were not immediately available for comment.
Hebron, the traditional burial site of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, is home to about 500 Jewish settlers who live in fortified compounds among more than 120,000 Palestinians. The settlers, considered among the most militant in the West Bank, often are accused of harassing the local Palestinian population, international workers and even Israeli soldiers.
Ms Abbs said the team in Hebron is subject to constant harassment. Earlier this month, a Swiss accompanier was wounded by settlers and had to have seven stitches in her head, she said.
The EAPPI programme supports Palestinians and Israelis working for peace by monitoring and reporting violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, offering protection by accompanying local citizens in daily activities, and advocating with churches for a peaceful end to the Israeli occupation. It was founded in 2002 and works in concert with Christian denominations across the globe.
In the UK the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel is coordinated by the Quakers, and has achieved ecumenical support from Catholics and Protestants through Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.
Christian Peacemaker Teams, a violence reduction and reconciliation programme initiated by Mennonites, Quakers and Brethren in Christ, has delegations in Hebron and At-Tuwani. It achieved prominence recently through the kidnap of four of its workers in Iraq.
One of the kidnapped men, Tom Fox from the USA, was killed early in March 2006. He had previously served with CPT in Israel-Palestine.
[Michele Green of Presbyterian Church USA News contributed to this report]
Jewish settlers attack Christian peace monitors in Hebron
-22/04/06
A group of Jewish settlers have attacked five international workers, including members of two church-sponsored monitoring teams, who were escorting Palestinian girls from a school in the divided West Bank city of Hebron.
Shouting “We will kill you!,” some 15 young Jewish settlers threw stones and kicked the foreign activists, who sustained minor injuries, mostly bruises, according to a spokesperson for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).
“They were escorting girls from a school which is directly opposite the Tel Rumeida Jewish settlement. The monitors take the schoolgirls to and from school each day,” said EAPPI spokesperson Gemma Abbs. “They (the settlers) were waiting for them to come out of the school when the incident happened.”
Abbs said about 15 young men disembarked from a bus at the settlement and immediately began stoning the fleeing monitors. “They threw stones at their backs as they tried to run away.”
The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), an initiative of the World Council of Churches in agreement with the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, identified its two accompaniers as Karin Laier from Germany and Tore Ottesen from Norway.
Three other activists working with the International Solidarity Movement and Christian Peacemaker Teams also were among those attacked, witnesses said. Among them was a 79-year-old woman who was kicked by the mob, Gemma Abbs added.
The Israeli authorities were not immediately available for comment.
Hebron, the traditional burial site of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, is home to about 500 Jewish settlers who live in fortified compounds among more than 120,000 Palestinians. The settlers, considered among the most militant in the West Bank, often are accused of harassing the local Palestinian population, international workers and even Israeli soldiers.
Ms Abbs said the team in Hebron is subject to constant harassment. Earlier this month, a Swiss accompanier was wounded by settlers and had to have seven stitches in her head, she said.
The EAPPI programme supports Palestinians and Israelis working for peace by monitoring and reporting violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, offering protection by accompanying local citizens in daily activities, and advocating with churches for a peaceful end to the Israeli occupation. It was founded in 2002 and works in concert with Christian denominations across the globe.
In the UK the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel is coordinated by the Quakers, and has achieved ecumenical support from Catholics and Protestants through Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.
Christian Peacemaker Teams, a violence reduction and reconciliation programme initiated by Mennonites, Quakers and Brethren in Christ, has delegations in Hebron and At-Tuwani. It achieved prominence recently through the kidnap of four of its workers in Iraq.
One of the kidnapped men, Tom Fox from the USA, was killed early in March 2006. He had previously served with CPT in Israel-Palestine.
[Michele Green of Presbyterian Church USA News contributed to this report]