- Five international peace activists were attacked last
Saturday when escorting Palestinian children to school in the village of
Al-Tuwani in the southern Hebron hills, on a route that passes between
the settlement of Maon and the outpost called Maon Ranch. An Italian peace
volunteer and an Amnesty International member required medical treatment
after being badly beaten with clubs.
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- This is the latest of three attacks on volunteers perpetrated
in the past month.
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- Kim Lamberty, an American volunteer with Christian Peacemaker
Teams (CPT), described the first attack against members of her organization
on September 29: "We were escorting five children to school, when
five masked figures dressed in black jumped out at us. The children began
to run. I was knocked down and beat with a chain. I lay immobile so they
would think I was dead."
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- Lamberty's arm and leg were broken. Her colleague Chris
Brown was also hospitalized with a punctured lung. Last Wednesday, rocks
were thrown at a single volunteer, who escaped unharmed.
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- Police say the attacks are not spontaneous outbreaks
of violence, but rather the work of a well-organized group, whose members
wear black, don ski masks and arm themselves with wooden clubs, chains
and rocks. Jewish settlers in the area have long been harassing Palestinian
residents. Palestinian children are afraid to go to school and many have
dropped out.
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- The recent attacks are seen as an intensification of
the violence. "Until now we were subjected to stone-throwing and spontaneous
actions, but not a planned ambush," says Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis
for Human Rights, another organization active in the area.
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- Activists also complain about police apathy to the attacks.
"We lay waiting there for half an hour before the police came. We
could have easily been killed," says Lamberty. No suspects have been
detained yet "but if the assailants were Arabs they would have arrested
the whole village and found those guilty" says Ezra Nawi, an activist
with Ta'ayush Arab-Jewish partnership.
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- Over the past week the Israel Defense Forces has been
discussing solutions with the residents of Tuba and with the peace activists.
The IDF is demanding that the international volunteers leave, promising
that soldiers would take over the job of escorting the children safely
to school. But Palestinian children are afraid of the soldiers. "We
don't trust the IDF to keep up the routine either," Nawi said.
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