To: RON BL who wrote (321254 ) 11/18/2002 10:52:12 PM From: Emile Vidrine Respond to of 769670 Fanatic fundamentalist settlers provoke fear even among Israeli Jews: Settlers defying Israeli law Actions spark fear in the region, Boston Globe, October 23, 2002 "Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories have suddenly broken into open defiance of the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on multiple fronts, threatening the stability of the ruling coalition and creating an environment that some Israelis compare to that which led to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Across the rocky, rolling hills of the northern West Bank, which the settlers call by the biblical name Samaria, settlers are attacking Palestinians attempting to harvest their olives - a major ritual of Palestinian society and an important source of income for the impoverished rural population. Olive harvesters have been beaten, shot at, wounded, and, in one case, killed... In the past week alone, a Palestinian was found crawling through the groves near an Itamar outpost after allegedly being beaten severely by residents, Palestinian villagers fled their homes after a settler rampage, and numerous olive harvesters were threatened. The injured man had three broken fingers, and was burned and bruised all over his body, according to the doctor in Nablus who treated him. A relative who took him to the hospital said the man told him settlers hung him upside down in a tree, with his hands tied behind his back, while beating him. In other Samarian settlements, Israeli police said, armed, masked settlers torched seven cars owned by Palestinians after the Palestinians refused to leave their olive groves."