Attack by settlers

JIT JUNCTION, a violent clash with settlers, Wednesday 16 June 2004 PMObservers: Sivan Z., Ayelet B., Irit S. (reporting) colour = red> 14:00 --- We drove towards the Beit Iba checkpoint. At Jit junction we saw a particularly long line of vehicles from the north. Among them were an army jeep and four ambulances with wide-open doors. We stopped to check what was going on. Were there injured or sick people in need of our help? One of the ambulance drivers was sitting on the concrete barrier, handcuffed and blindfolded. The reason: he’d tried to snatch a weapon from one of the soldiers. He said he was on his way to hospital in Nablus with a sick little girl, and had asked several times to be checked and let through but without success. The soldier shoved him as he told him to go back to the ambulance. He asked the soldier not to shove him and in response, he was shoved again, this time with a rifle butt. The driver pushed the rifle away and hence the complaint.14:20 --- Irit called the army's "humanitarian" hotline and Israel Radio's military correspondent to report this incident. It then transpired that another ambulance had been detained for an hour-and-a-half ( the driver’s documents were taken for checking), and the passenger was a sick old man on the way home from hospital with his wife. Irit called again to complain.14:30(approximately) – A young settler arrived, parked his Subaru in the centre of the junction and began to shout and scream very aggressively following closely behind us, cursing and threatening.As usual, we didn’t respond in any way. Then we saw him take out a mobile phone and summon his friends. Irit called the Deputy Police Commander of the Samaria District, U.Z., who advised us to call 100 [the general emergency number for the police] and ask for protection. Something in his voice persuaded Irit that this wasn’t enough, and she also called Knesset Member Yossi Sarid and again the Israel Radio correspondent . Later when our colleague Dafna B, asked U.Z. why it had taken so long to rescue us from the settlers, he told her: “They only asked the police for a ride because their driver had run away.”Five minutes later three women arrived together with another man in a car clearly marked Qedumim Local Council [Qedumim is an Israeli Jewish settlement in the occupied territories] (licence number 1521756) and equipped with two megaphones. They attacked us with "battle cries", screamed, shouted, threatened, cursed and soon became physically violent, shoving us hard and pressing the megaphones into our ears. Their curses included the promise that next time we came – we’d die. They also attacked Ayelet and tore off her badge, ripped her writing pad out of her hand and snatched Irit’s notebook. As they chased us among the cars, buses and trucks (before the eyes of the Palestinians and the soldiers) we asked them to allow us to leave. We were all three bruised and bleeding. We tried to reach our car, but N., our driver, had identified one of the three women attackers as violent Shoshi -- who, together with Daniella Weiss [long known for her violence towards political opponents], had been one of the women who, several days previously, had attacked our colleague Menuha and others . So N., wise after the earlier experience, had driven off before they beat him up again.It was very hot and we now had no transport or water (we’d given it to the old couple in the ambulance), and no one to help us. Stunned and shaking, we began to climb the road to Jit. At this stage the male settlers apparently left, but the saintly women continued to harass us – following us closely, screaming and cursing us through the megaphones and totally running amok.Irit telephoned to ask for help or advice and the women settlers made their calls to summon reinforcements.15:00 --- Approximately 25 minutes after we'd called the police for help, a police car arrived with two policemen, one of them called Shimon Dehan. If you drive slowly from Kedumim, it takes 3 minutes! We were convinced that we were now safe from these screaming women, but not so: they now attacked the policemen, cursing and threatening them, though without megaphones. Amazingly enough, the policemen were in no hurry to come to our aid; instead they obediently carried out the settler women’s orders. First, as instructed by the women, they took Irit’s ID card to check whether the soldiers wanted to submit a complaint against us. We asked the policeman not to leave with the vehicle so he left the second policeman (“armed”) on the spot while he drove to the junction. At this stage, we told our driver to take no risks and to leave the area.The soldiers refused to submit a complaint, so the policeman came back to us. After 20 minutes, we asked to be driven somewhere where we could link up with our driver and go home. Only after making several telephone calls did they agree to take us to Funduk, where police car No. 22264 was waiting with a policeman named Erez and a driver.N. arrived and we transferred to our car. The police car escorted us in case we encountered another ambush of heroic settlers and in this way we drove into Israel. Irit spent several hours in the Emergency Room, was given a saline drip and had her injuries treated, but she still hasn’t recovered from the shock. The same is true of Ayelet. Sivan, the newcomer, went through it with relative ease and said it wouldn’t deter her from joining Machsomwatch..