Why do they hate us? Maybe because we support a vicious colonial regime - Israel, that commits daily crimes against the Arabs as it steals Arab land. Maybe because we condemn every desperate attack by the Palestinians, but are silent in face of the daily attacks by intruders and robbers called Israeli settlers.
Hmmm, maybe if we were'nt seen as shamefully unbalanced in our actions against Arabs vs Israel, our policies would not be seen as merely serving Israeli goals?
Funny, I know this is not a story that would be posted here by the Israel apologists with their poison Debka sources, but it is reality. Nothing new, these are the methods by which Israel was created to begin with. They are simply extending them now beyond 67 borders. "How the West was won" - Israeli style, LOL! I wonder how many desperate future enemies Israel created just here, just in this one instance, one of so many thousands:
latimes.com
Palestinians Abandon Village
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By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH, Associated Press Writer
YANUN, West Bank -- Sobbing as they filled a truck with furniture and piled themselves into dusty cars, six Palestinian families set out from this tiny village of old stone houses, leaving it completely abandoned.
Members of the Sobih clan said they were fleeing the village -- once home to 25 families -- after four years of worsening attacks by Jewish settlers, who have set up illegal outposts on nearby hilltops. The attacks have become increasingly frequent in recent months, they said.
"Our life here is more bitter than hell," Kamal Sobih, a thin, bearded man of 40, said Friday.
Groups of masked Jewish settlers have charged into the village, coming at night with dogs and horses, stealing sheep, hurling stones through windows and beating the men with fists and rifle butts, Palestinian residents said.
An electricity generator has been scorched by fire, knocking out power to the village. Three large water tanks were tipped over and emptied.
Palestinians complain bitterly of land lost over the past decades of Mideast conflict. The exodus from Yanun is believed to be the first time in recent years that Palestinians have abandoned an entire village because of the conflict.
Confrontations between Jewish settlers and Palestinians often fall into a murky legal area, with the Israeli army, the police and the military's civil administration in the territories all being involved.
An Israeli army spokesman, who insisted his name not be used, said soldiers try to prevent conflict between settlers and Palestinians, but that forces are primarily in the area to protect Israelis from attacks by Palestinian militants.
Spokesmen for the police and the civil administration could not be reached Friday evening, the beginning of the Jewish sabbath. Phone calls to the Settler's Council, an umbrella group for the settlers, also went unanswered Friday.
The nearby Jewish settlement of Itamar, about six miles west, was attacked by a Palestinian gunman June 20. Five Israelis were killed and eight were injured before the gunman was shot dead.
The residents of Yanun have not been linked to that attack or other violence.
More than 200,000 Jews live in about 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- lands that are home to 3 million Palestinians, who hope to establish a state on the territory Israel conquered in the 1967 Mideast War.
Most settlements have been built with the approval of Israel's government, though the practice has been widely criticized internationally. In addition, some settlers have set up new outposts without government approval, putting up trailer homes and makeshift structures in the hope they eventually will get government authorization.
Yanun is an isolated valley hamlet flanked by two illegal outposts on nearby hilltops. The nearest settlement approved by the Israeli government is Itamar.
In Yanun, the men cried as they got into two cars to leave for the larger nearby village of Aqraba, where they believe there will be safety in numbers. They will live with relatives there or move into rented apartments.
"Death would be easier than leaving," Kamal Sobih said, describing his attachment to the land where generations of his family have lived. "But there is no choice."
He said he often spent nights keeping watch for attackers from his windows.
Ahmed Sobih, an elderly man, sat in the back seat of one car, an Arab head scarf covering his right eye. He said he lost sight in the eye after a beating by an Israeli settler.
He was tending sheep on the hillside when a stranger approached. Sobih, mistaking the man for someone from a neighboring Arab village, went to shake hands with the man and offer him a cigarette but he instead was beaten with his own walking stick, he said.
As they packed up, two children led sheep out of the village.
The village chief, Abdelatif Sobih, was the last to go, packing up his rickety Volkswagen Beetle. He said he has been attacked seven times and his wife, Raideh, threatened to leave him if they did not abandon the place.
"I kept urging the people not to leave, but they did, one by one," he said, crying. "They left me without a choice. I'm blaming my people as well (as the settlers) because they left me alone."
He drove off, leaving the village empty. They left behind almost nothing. Three old tires lay in front of a house. Some sheep munched grass nearby -- the owner of the flock plans to come back for them in coming days, the departing resident said.
They also leave behind hundreds of valuable olive trees.
In Aqraba, a bumpy 10-minute drive down a winding road, Abdelatif Sobih and his family unpacked their belongings on the porch of his brother's old house, a cramped building in disrepair.
One of his children, Bara, 6, carefully took from the car a homemade bird cage sheltering two small charcoal-colored birds and carried it into the new home. |
