[CTRL] Israeli Settlers Beat,Chase & Stone European Monitors

[William Shannon]

http://www.dawn.com/2001/08/22/int14.htm Settlers scare away monitors By Lee Hockstader and Daniel Williams AL QUDS: In the past few months, Jewish settlers have beaten, cursed and stoned a small force of European monitors who patrol the divided city of Al Khalil. On Monday the monitors said they had had enough and announced they would no longer patrol the city's Jewish enclave. The announcement by the observers dealt a crippling blow to a seven-year-old experiment, the only international monitoring force active in the West Bank to which Israel and the Palestinians jointly consented. The setback was considered significant because the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, has sought to persuade foreign governments to place observers throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an idea fiercely resisted by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Israeli government. The halt to patrols "is because of the great number of attacks committed by some of the settlers," said Karl-Henrik Sjursen of Norway, the chief of the observer mission. "Our observers have been kicked, spat at, dragged from their cars and had boulders thrown at them." The monitors - Danes, Swedes, Swiss, Norwegians, Italians and Turks - were first deployed after a Jewish settler killed 29 Palestinians at prayer in Al Khalil in 1994 and have been on patrol continuously since mid-1996. From the start they have been held in low esteem by Al Khalil's 450 Jewish settlers. The settlers suspected them of colluding with the Palestinians. With their blue smocks, flak jackets and underpowered white sedans, the 85 monitors have no firepower and scant authority in a place that sometimes seems to understand little else. And when the Palestinian intifada erupted last fall, with frequent gunfights in the heart of Al Khalil, the monitors were embattled as rarely before. They were a particular target of the Al Khalil settlers, a militant community that has brawled not only with Al Khalil's Palestinians but also with Israeli soldiers there to protect the Jews. The Jewish settlers accused the monitors of spying for Palestinian gunmen. The charge was denied not only by the monitors but by the Israeli army, but the settlers believed it nonetheless. Known officially as the Temporary International Presence in Al Khalil, or TIPH, the foreigners were disparaged by some of Al Khalil's Jews using the same initials: Two Idiots Patrolling Al Khalil. In recent days, the settlers have heaved rocks through the windows of the Europeans' little cars, endangering their lives, the monitors said. "We have a mandate to give a feeling of security to the Palestinian population because of the massacre in 1994," said Saida Keller, a Swiss spokeswoman for the monitors. "But when our security is not guaranteed we can't give a feeling of security to others." DEEPENING DESPAIR: To understand Lufti Bishawi's bitter despair, it would help to walk in his shoes. They are secondhand, bought from a pile of cracked and smelly hand-me-downs in an open-air market, and they are from Israel. "Every time I take a step, I feel like I am walking in a swamp," said Bishawi, 69. "How did I get to this point, when I am old, to end my life in shoes thrown away by the enemy who robs me of everything?" Bishawi's business, peddling chlorine bleach by horse-drawn cart, has all but collapsed. "People are barely washing clothes and floors with soap, much less chlorine," he said. His income has declined from about $10 a day last fall to $5 today. His extended family, which includes unemployed sons and their wives and children, numbers 34. The older men scrounge for porter jobs carrying goods around the market. Young grandsons beg at a police station and bring home an egg or two when the officers are feeling generous. Bishawi begins his day at dawn, when it is still cool; his tin-roofed house will be like an oven by 7:30. After a breakfast of beans and herbs, he harnesses his horse and begins his rounds from house to house and marketplace to marketplace. The horse's stall is one room in the five-room house. Bishawi began his rounds at the Fras market, stopping at Mohammed Masmiyeh's school-clothing store. Masmiyeh reduced the price for girls' smocks from $5 to $2.50, and for boys' shirts from $7.50 to $5. "I ordered only the cheapest clothes, from China," Masmiyeh said. "I should be doing $150 to $200 business a day, but I am doing no more than $75. And no one is buying new school bags." Each month the family receives a bag of flour, rice and sugar, plus $10 per child. The family also begs for help from the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, which provides limited food and money. The Bishawis eat chicken every 10 days. "I would kill for a mango," sighed Sawson, wife of Bishawi's oldest son, Hassan.-Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.