Vigilantism in West Bank : Arab Attacks, Israeli Reprisals Rock Town

In recent years, this Arab town of 30,000 people has been considered one of the quietest in the occupied territories, but in the past few weeks it has become the focal point of violence in the conflict between West Bank Palestinians and the Jewish settlers who live among them.

A series of Molotov cocktail attacks against Jewish motorists in the area has killed a woman and injured four members of her family and shattered the illusion many settlers had that they were living in the suburbs of Tel Aviv.

More militant settlers, from outside the immediate area, have used the incidents that have occurred here to justify a trend toward taking the law into their own hands to protest what they call inadequate army protection.

The situation has reopened a debate in Israel over vigilante activity and what an Israeli army spokesman concedes is an “asymmetrical” system of justice in the occupied territories--where Palestinians face tough and immediate punishment for disturbing order, while law-breaking Jewish settlers get off lightly if they are punished at all.

The most recent incident occurred after the attempted firebombing of an Israeli car on Wednesday. Settlement leaders broke through an army roadblock into the center of Qalqiliya and smashed soft drink bottles against storefronts, overturned garbage bins and set fire to tires. The residents had been restricted to their homes under an army curfew.

‘Make a Mess’

Israeli army radio broadcast a tape recording the next day on which the voice of Daniell Weiss, leader of the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) settlement, could be heard urging her followers to ignore the soldiers trying to quiet them.

“People, don’t stand there with your hands in your pockets!” she shouted. “Make a mess, noise. . . . You’re embarrassed by what I’m doing? I’m more embarrassed when they kill a child!”

Weiss, a middle-age housewife, was elected secretary of the militant settlement group nearly three years ago, in part to restore its image after a score of its members were arrested for a series of terrorist attacks that left three Arab students dead and two West Bank Palestinian mayors maimed.

Qalqiliya was first targeted by the settlers April 11, when Ofra Moses, a mother of three from the nearby settlement of Alfei Menashe, burned to death in her car when it was hit by a firebomb. Her husband and three children were injured in the incident.

No one was charged in that incident, but hundreds of settlers rioted here that night, burning vehicles and smashing windows. There have since been several other attempted firebombings of Israeli cars in the area, but all have failed.

“We are indeed in a situation marked by a certain rise in attacks of a certain kind, first and foremost petrol bombs, and we have to deal with this,” Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Friday in an interview with Israel radio.

But the settlers say he has not done nearly enough to protect the 60,000 Jews who live among about 1.4 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It is a complaint they have made before. But in recent weeks they have gone a step further and organized civil patrols not only around their settlements but also outside Palestinian refugee camps and along major West Bank roads.

Volunteer Escorts

“We don’t have the exact number of people, but we have something around 30 vehicles of volunteers,” said Shmuel Ben-Ishai, a founder of the patrol group and leader of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s extremist Kach party in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. He said the volunteers escort Jewish buses and act as “bait” for Arab attack.

Ben-Ishai said the group has managed “to catch a few Arabs.” What do they do with them? “Hit them,” he said. . . . What is the logical thing to do with them?”

Why not turn them over to the army or the police? he was asked.

“Yes, and the police are going to release them,” he replied.

An army spokesman said the military has tried to curb vigilante activity. Some of Ben-Ishai’s patrols have been detained for a few hours, and Ben-Ishai himself was questioned by police Thursday.

The military has also sworn out a complaint against Weiss, charging her with disturbing public order, damaging property and entering a closed military zone. She has refused to answer police questions about the incident, and she refused to be fingerprinted.

“We don’t have the power of arrest over Israeli citizens,” an army spokesman said. “What the army can do when Israeli settlers are violating the law is to submit all the necessary evidence and to present the official complaint to the police, and the police will prosecute.”

Difficult Job

The army, he said, has the difficult job of being “responsible for law and order in an area where the judicial system is asymmetrical.” He said the Arab population is subject to military law, but West Bank settlers are in a “judicial enclave” protected by Israeli law.

In most cases, according to Israeli civil rights organizations, charges against West Bank settlers are quietly dropped.

The army spokesman said it is impossible to stop altogether either Arab terrorist attacks in the West Bank or settler vigilante acts.

“What we can do,” he said, “is curtail them, keep them at a minimal level. One has to live with that reality.”