Axe-wielding Palestinian kills Israeli teen

Axe-wielding Palestinian kills Israeli teen

BAT AYIN, West Bank (AFP) - An axe-wielding Palestinian man rampaged through a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, killing a 13-year-old Israeli boy and wounding a seven-year-old, medics said.

Israel's hawkish new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly condemned the attack, warning through a spokesman that his government would have a "zero tolerance policy" towards such acts and urging Palestinians to do the same.

The perpetrator fled after attacking the two boys at Bat Ayin, southwest of Bethlehem, one of the West Bank's most radical settlements, shortly after midday, witnesses said.

The army was conducting a massive search in the area and residents of other settlements in the area were instructed to stay indoors, radio and television reported.

The boy killed was named as Shlomo Nativ, whose parents were among the founders of the settlement in 1989. His funeral was to take place later on Thursday.

The wounded seven-year-old was Yair Gamliel, the son of Ofer Gamliel who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for participating in a foiled attack on a Palestinian girls school in Jerusalem in 2002, media said.

"I was near the settlement offices when I saw a Palestinian with an axe running toward me," Avinoam, a witness to the attack, told Israeli television.

"I managed to block his arm, we fell to the ground and struggled but he managed to run away.

"I called for help, another resident fired at him, but missed. When I got up, I saw a child wounded in the head. I cried to warn his mother, who ran toward him," he said.

Bat Ayin is one of the most radical settlements in the occupied West Bank. Most of its fewer than 1,000 residents are hardline settlers who normally prevent Palestinians from entering the settlement boundaries.

In a phone call to AFP and a statement released to media in the West Bank, Islamic Jihad and the Imad Mughniyeh Group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was "a natural response to the crimes of the occupation."

In a statement in Gaza, Islamic Jihad hailed the attack, but denied it was responsible.

The Imad Mughniyeh Group is named after a Hezbollah commander who was killed by a car bomb in Damascus in a February 2008 attack that was blamed on but denied by Israel.

It also claimed responsibility for the last deadly Palestinian attack in the West Bank, when two policemen were shot dead on March 15 near the settlement of Massua in the northern Jordan Valley.

The election of Netanyahu, who opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, has sparked widespread concern among Palestinians and the international community for the future of the troubled peace process.

"The new Israeli government will have a zero tolerance policy toward these sort of terrorist attacks and refuses to accept them as routine," Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev told AFP.

"The Palestinian government must both in word and in deed also have a zero tolerance policy to demonstrate its commitment to peace and reconciliation."

In a statement Thursday, Michael Ben Ari of the far-right pro-settler National Union party, said the attack was a consequence of Israel taking down some roadblocks in the occupied Palestinian territory.

"We warned that the easing of the roadblocks will bring catastrophe," he said.

Israel has more than 500 roadblocks in the West Bank, with the barriers severely limiting the freedom of movement in the territory home to 2.4 million Palestinians.

An MP with the party of firebrand Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, David Rotem, told Israeli television that "if it's necessary to assure the security of Israelis, we will increase the number of roadblocks" in the West Bank.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are home to an estimated more than 280,000 people, have been one of the main sticking points in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict and are considered illegal by the international community.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090402/world/mideast_conflict_israel...

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Permalink Reply by Mazin Qumsiyeh on April 3, 2009 at 2:12pm

Mick stated: "98% of the Arab population of the West Bank lives under PA rule. If the PA controlled the lawlessness there would be no blockades ... as there were none before the terrorists started killing Israeli children"

This is simply false on all aspects mentioned.
1) We Palestinians live under Israeli rule. We do not live under Palestinian rule. The so called Palestinain authority has no authority. Even moving around the West Bank is controlled by Israel. This is also true of coming in and out of the West Bank. All family and civil matters are by Israel (no child for example can be registered as born here if the Israeli interior ministry does not give a green light). . All laws on buildings, movement, security etc are controlled by Israel. All natural resources (85% of teh water under our feet is allocated to Israeli use) and on and on.

2) Considering this situation and that the sole function of the PA was designed to be subcontractors to stifle resistance, they have actually done a great job at that main function. They did a far better job than Israel did. There were lots more attacks when Israel did not subcontract the oppression.

3) The blockade and destruction of Palestinian society started November 30, 1947 and continued for teh past 62 years. I repeat November 30, 1947 right after the UN partition resolution when Hagannah, Irgun, and Stern gangs started ethnically cleansing Palestine. Nearly six months went by and half the Palestinain refugees were created before the Arab armies entered Palestine to try (in vain) to restore order and stop the ethnic cleansing. IN 1949-1950, a blockade on the remaining Palestinain populations near Al Majdal and Iraq anl Manshiya was implemented until the starving population agreed to sign papers of "voluntary transfer to Gaza". A little history reveiw might be appropriate here. For example the blockade and wall around gaza was done before a signle suicide bombing happened. The restriction on movement in teh West Bank also started when Israel ruled it and before a single suicide bombing happened.

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Permalink Reply by Mick on April 4, 2009 at 6:18am

Mazin, what you say is just too weird for me to discuss. Let me just say, that if Jewish groups had indeed "ethnically cleansed Palestine" then there would not be a single Arab there, as happened to the Jews of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. That, Mazin, is "ethnic cleansing", where not a soilitary person remained.

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Permalink Reply by Hiba on April 4, 2009 at 11:54am

I would like to hear from you Mick about my respond?

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Permalink Reply by Neri Bar-On on April 4, 2009 at 2:45pm

Mick,

It is easy for us to recognize what is wrong with people who experience reality different then us. as different world view becomes emotional reaction we may experience the hard terms Mazin use, which I do not like as well.

But the hard task is to see reality from the perspective of the Palestinians, and while the Holocaust supply a strong symbol for supporting the existence of Jewish state, it is also play strongly in the world view of palestinians as core that motivated the Zionist movement and brought the Naqba to millions of Palestinian Arabs.

from that perspective I can see the experience of humiliation when some group of people start to emigrate into your ancestor land and change the whole reality in such a way that you live your life in a "national prison style" need to be checked daily in checkpoints and have to live in economically deprived life conditions. .

SO you can go and fight Mazin words, their sting is painful and you can also recognize and respect the pain that drive them out of his keyboard, pane over the waste of productive happy life to so many people who were just born in the "other side" of the boarders.

Read also Hiba remarks, I find a lot of wisdom and honesty in them, the Palestinian mind is much open then when we expected in Israel ... beside all this killing a new conscious emerge and we need to connect to it instead of criticizing Palestinians to use bad words about Israel.

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Permalink Reply by Basil Keilani on April 4, 2009 at 5:02pm

Mick,

Let us take what you said, Let me just say, that if Jewish groups had indeed "ethnically cleansed Palestine" then there would not be a single Arab there". I remember telling a closed-minded Syrian that historically it did happen that Syrian Muslims killed Christians, and he said that cannot be true since Syria has a population of 12% and there would be none left i.e. he was denying that massacres happened historically, and that Christians were killed in Syria though it certainly happened in 1860. You are sounding like that Syrian in this case in regards to the Palestinians. The fact is many Palestinian villages were emptied of its inhabitants.
Just because Israel has a population of Palestinians doesn't mean there was no ethnic cleansing.
Yes, Jews have been ethnic cleansed from the West Bank for example in Hebron in 1929.
That happened a long time, though it was wrong, but Israel in 2009 practices ethnic cleansing to this day.
In reality, Jews have been ethnic cleansed. It's true, and it's true it's happened to Palestinians on a larger scale in Palestine, and it is still happening to them today. They are human beings that you feel warm about, so I trust you don't want them to suffer, and it's not your fault that it's happening, and you would not implement such policies, because I trust you are a principled man. I hope that I am correct.

Thanks...

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Permalink Reply by Mazin Qumsiyeh on April 4, 2009 at 8:06pm

Let me add to the analogies of Basil something taht Mick might understand better. Imagine if someone had said that a genocide/holocaust did not happen in Europe because afterall there are many Millions of European Jews and Gypsis still around!! Such denial would be rightly condemned. Nakba denial is equally atrocious IMHO. Now, on teh issue of land ownership etc, there are plenty of documents about who owns what lands in Palestine/Israel. I would be very thrilled if Israeli racist Zionists would agree to an independent group to come and look at all land deeds and for all illegal colonial settlers to vacate Arab owned lands and properties whether in Jaffa, Haifa, Deir Yasin or East Jerusalem and VICE VERSA!! Actually we have studies of estimated worth of stolen property from Palestinains at $4 Trillion.

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Permalink Reply by Mick on April 6, 2009 at 10:03am

Basil, perhaps we differ on the definition of "ethnic cleansing". My understanding is that it means totally removing a population of a certain ehtnic background. Note that Jews were entirely removed from Hebron, from the West Bank, from Gaza, from East Jerusalem ... now that's ethnic cleansing. If tried unsuccessfully it is an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Israel's Declaration of Independence, broadcast throughout Israel the day it was declared a state, in the middle of the 1948 war, begging Arab residents to stay, puts a spanner into the theory of "ethnic cleansing". Had Israel really wanted every Arab out of there, do you believe for one second that they would not all be gone? That is the only point I was making.

It undoubtedly suits some people to play the "ethnic cleansing" carde in order to demonise Israel. Perhaps it's worth taking a closer look at exactly how Israel finished up with an Arab population of 1.5million, all equal citizens under the law, and with Arabic as a national language. It is certainly inconsistent with a hatred that would prompt "ethnic cleansing". That is what the Holocaust and Bosnia were about, as was Rhawanda, and now Darfur, with millions being killed in order to ensure they ceased to exist.

The strangest thing about this "ethnic cleansing" is the both the Arab population of Israel and the territories is growing in leaps and bounds. Perhaps we should call it "negative ethnic cleansing"

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Permalink Reply by Mick on April 5, 2009 at 9:30am

Basil, I tend to agree with Neri, that these legal debates won't ultimately bring peace, but am also heartened that Israel applies the humanitarian princilples of the Geneva conventions within the limits of the guidelines, as set out in the document. As to the document itself (which I've read before), I checked your link. It cites conflicting legal opinion, but has no legal standing itself. Right from the preamble it is clearly misrepresented, and you don't need to be a legal eagle to see it. It cites Article 2 of the convention ""The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance." (from Article 2)

If this commitee can so blatantly ignore "the territory of a High Contracting Party" in attempting to make a case, I fail to see how you find any of it valid. High Contracting Parties are the original signatories, and article 2 deals with their land. So whose land are we talking about in applying the conventions to the West Bank and Gaza? Certainly not any High Contracting Party, nor anybody else that the conventions define (non-signatory states). The commitee is desparately attempting to apply something that simply doesn't. Even the legal experts they produce tend to concurr, and make the point that Israel's obligations should be considered in the humanitarion context of the conventions, rather than the legal contract context ... something that Israel does voluntarily anyway.

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Permalink Reply by Basil Keilani on April 5, 2009 at 10:13am

Mick,this has already been addressed in the UN Security Council, World Court, and also a meeting ot the Geneva Convention in Switzerland. The lawyers are not desperate, they know the law. Israel needs to follow it. The attempt to say Israel need not comply because of a question of sovereignty doesn't work. German officers already tried that, and I mentioned that before.

No, I am not comparing Israel to Nazi Germany nor I am in the business of want to judge Germans of that time, Israelis, or whomever. I am looking at the legal issues here. German officers tried to use the defense that some territories had questionable sovereignty, and the court ruled against them.

Also, the Hague when addressing the fact that the wall Israel has built annexes land in the West Bank stated it is illegal. The judges at the Hague were not ambiguous about it, and I pasted the link to their ruling and no judge dissented including the Jewish judge. It was very clear to them. The World Court was clear.

Also, the Geneva Convention meeting in the late 1990s stated that settlements violate the Geneva Convention. You quoted a part of the Geneva Convention, but the Geneva Convention clearly states that you cannot transfer a civilian population into occupied territory. The committe is not desperate, the law is clear, only for Israel it is not clear. Israel is actually desperate to not have the Geneva Convention apply to it.

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/boyle.html
by Professor Francis Boyle
Professor of International Law, University of Illinois

Belligerent occupation is governed by The Hague Regulations of 1907, as well as by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the customary laws of belligerent occupation. Security Council Resolution 1322 (2000), paragraph 3 continued: “Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in a Time of War of 12 August 1949;...” Again, the Security Council vote was 14 to 0, becoming obligatory international law.

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Permalink Reply by Mick on April 6, 2009 at 10:06am

Let's leave it Basil, you and I won't be deciding where the Geneva Conventions apply, there are bigger legal minds for that. Perhaps it would be more fruitful to discuss how peace can happen.

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Permalink Reply by Basil Keilani on April 6, 2009 at 4:58pm

Mick,

The main point of agreement between the PA and Israel is that UN 242 and 338 should be applied and that if any territory of the West Bank is something Israel gets then an equivalent amount of territory would be given from the 1948 lands. That's what is at hand in the end regardless of what settlements are out there, that's the understanding of UN 242 and 338 i.e. land for peace. Peace can happen with a final status agreement, a unified Jerusalem where both call it a capital, joint religious sovereignty over the holy sites so Jews, Christians and Muslims won't feel threatened. That's what I support. We can find solutions to our problems that don't involve Jews and Palestinians killing each other...

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Permalink Reply by Mazin Qumsiyeh on April 7, 2009 at 8:17pm

"The main point of agreement between the PA and Israel is that UN 242 and 338 should be applied and that if any territory of the West Bank is something Israel gets then an equivalent amount of territory would be given from the 1948 lands."

I am sorry to dissagree with you Basil but Israel never agreed to the principle you state. International law is indeed clear about the need for Israel to withdraw from all the areas occupied in 1967 (inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by force). Internatuional law actually does not recognize Israel's rule over the pre-1967 areas (afterall the only possible legitimacy, flimsy as that maybe, is the partition resolution of 1947 which 55% of Palestine not 78% for an Israeli state). The Fateh position since 1988 has been based on having a Palestinain sovereign state in the 22% that is the WB&Gaza. These people are willing to have exchange of land as long as it is the same quality and quantity. Istrael has never accepted that, ie. never accepted to live on 78% of the land with minor adjustiments based on same quality/quantity. Israel will never agree to that since they now have the best most productive lands in teh West Bank plus 85% of the water resources. A one state solution is actually far more likely than a two state solution and has been what is being made here all the time.