Jewish Settlers Step Up Pressure for Reprisals Against Palestinians

Enraged Jewish settlers blocked West Bank roads, torched Palestinian crops and scuffled with Israeli soldiers Friday in the third consecutive day of right-wing violence aimed at forcing the government to crush Palestinian militants.

The clashes--combined with new Palestinian attacks on Israelis, including a suicide bombing Friday that killed two soldiers--further strained a U.S.-brokered cease-fire that appeared near collapse and compounded the pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to unleash military reprisals.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is due to arrive next week on an emergency mission to salvage the truce and avert wider bloodshed. Some Israeli commentators mused Friday that he may be too late.

Sharon is under increasing pressure to strike back at Palestinians, who killed three settlers this week. For decades, as he promoted Jewish settlement expansion throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sharon was the settlers’ champion and they his loyal followers. But today they are furious with the prime minister.

Three settlers were arrested Friday in the West Bank after dozens blocked key roads near Hebron and north of the Palestinian city of Ramallah and stoned Palestinian vehicles. The army said it confiscated some of the settlers’ weapons.

Also in the West Bank, settlers set a field on fire near Nablus and clashed with Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Palestinians attacked Israelis. In the most serious incident, two soldiers from the Israeli army’s Givati brigade were killed when they approached a booby-trapped vehicle stuck in the sand in the northern Gaza Strip. The soldiers were on routine patrol near the Jewish settlement of Dugit when they were lured to the vehicle by a Palestinian asking for help. The Palestinian blew himself up, taking the soldiers with him.

Palestinians also hurled 30 Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces in Hebron, the army said.

Settlers are protesting ambushes on the roads they use to reach their homes in isolated, heavily fortified enclaves scattered in the West Bank and Gaza. Illegal under international law, the settlements are anathema to Palestinians, who envision the land as part of their future state.

“We want to live safely in our country,” declared Shlomo Luberman, a 54-year-old bank manager and one of scores of settlers camped out Friday across the street from Sharon’s office. “Either it’s us or them. There is no choice. I want the Arabs out.”

Around him, the settlers--all from the hard-line Neve Tsur settlement in the West Bank--lounged in tents, prepared meals and handed out protest signs. A small group stood outside Sharon’s office, chanting slogans: “Jewish blood cannot be spilled in vain!” and “No Arabs, no terror.”

Settler leaders, warning that their communities are about to explode, announced daily demonstrations outside Sharon’s office and other protests. At two of this week’s funerals, they shouted down the government representative.

The estimated 200,000 Jews who live in West Bank and Gaza enclaves, among about 3 million Palestinians, voted overwhelmingly for Sharon in his landslide election victory in February. They have considered themselves his closest ally yet increasingly lash out at him, saying that if Sharon won’t wipe out Palestinian “terrorists,” they will.

“We don’t know what to tell our children today, how [Sharon], the warrior we adored, turned into the hesitant Ariel,” Bentzi Lieberman, chairman of an umbrella organization representing West Bank settlers, said during the funeral for Iliya Krivitz, who was ambushed by Palestinians on Wednesday. “Here on Iliya’s grave, we demand that you put an end to the tears, the bereavement, the grief.”

In an interview with Israeli television broadcast Friday night, Sharon would not discuss the loss of settler support, except to say he was confident that the community’s leaders had learned from experience and would not try to bring down a government so sympathetic to their cause.

Sharon travels to the U.S. early next week and is scheduled to meet with President Bush.

Israeli newspapers reported Friday that the army will employ new measures to defend Jews who use the dangerous West Bank roads, including extensive overflights of drones and combat helicopters, beefed-up military patrols and ambushes of suspected terrorists. The army also ordered settlers to drive in convoys of at least two cars.

Outside Sharon’s office, however, the Neve Tsur settlers were not impressed with the measures.

“As we say in Hebrew, blah blah blah,” said Amos Aharonoff, a 24-year veteran of Neve Tsur who works in the aircraft manufacturing industry. “We are waiting for real action.”

Two Neve Tsur residents have been killed and 18 injured since the start last September of the current uprising, which has claimed about 600 lives, most of them Palestinian. Six Israelis, including the two soldiers Friday, and six Palestinians have been killed since CIA Director George J. Tenet pushed the two sides into accepting the cease-fire agreement June 13.

The Cabinet of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, in a statement released Thursday night, accused the Israeli government of “freeing the hands of settlers” to attack Palestinian villagers.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group that focuses on abuses in the West Bank and Gaza, recently issued a report citing “systematic failures” of Israeli security forces to prevent or stop settler violence against Palestinians. B’Tselem also condemned Palestinian attacks on settlers, who are for the most part civilians, and attempts by Palestinian officials to cite the illegality of the settlements to justify the attacks on residents.

Ehud Sprinzak, an expert on right-wing extremism at the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya, said vigilantism is likely to increase if settlers continue to feel unprotected by their government and under siege.

“What they really want to do is not take revenge but pressure Sharon to returning to the ‘old Sharon,’ ” Sprinzak said. “Solving political problems through military means--that is the goal of the settlers. They want Sharon to take off the gloves and strike.”