Discovering Oslo 2 Diary
11 December 1996
Settlers killed in bypass road attack
News of the attack
While sitting with friends in my house at around 8:30pm, I hear voices outside calling, “Nigel...Najeeb...Nigel!” It’s the shebab (“guys”, lit. “youth”) from the Computer Center, trapped in Ramallah by a checkpoint at the settler bypass road near Surda, the setting for many previous diary entries. In fact there are two checkpoints, a Palestinian Police one just before it inside the Area A border of Ramallah and an Israeli one just outside. The shebab live on the other side of both, in Birzeit village, so they are likely to be spending tonight with friends in Ramallah.
They reported hearing sirens earlier, and the combination of Israeli and Palestinian checkpoints suggests that there has been an amaleeyat (“operation”) near to Beit El settlement (right). In fact, the last time we saw joint checkpoints there enforcing a closure was in May, when a settler was killed while standing at a bus stop outside Beit El. It was safe to assume that something similar had happened. This was confirmed later, when we heard that a car had been ambushed on the settler road, just over a year after a similar incident near the same spot.
No surprise
We have been expecting it. I have been prophesying to anyone unfortunate enough to be in the same car as me, each time we pass the glistening black slice out of the valley floor, that blood will be spilled on the settler road. For starters, the road is a security nightmare. Built by an Israeli government obsessed with security, one wonders at the glaring stupidity inherent in the construction of a road on confiscated Palestinian land, that runs along the bottom of a valley with rolling hills surrounding it. A perfect place for snipers to anonymously pick off the settlers cars below, never mind drive-by shootings on the long, dark winding road, far from earshot.
The settlement at Beit El (“Bethel” from the Bible, the site of Jacob’s dream) has attracted high numbers of religious settlers, who have established a yeshiva (Jewish religious school) and a unpleasantly right-wing radio station called Arutz 7. This brand of settlers are cut from a whole different mould than those, say, in secular Ariel (west of Nablus), advertised as a dormitory suburb of Tel Aviv. They manifest the profound arrogance familliar to religious extremists and regularly and openly express a disturbing contempt for the rights of the Palestinian population, discussed in a previous entry written after a visit to Beit El during the December 1995 Israeli redeployment from Ramallah.
This environment produces the kind of people who, rather than rejoicing at a new Peace Process-inspired bypass road that halved their travelling time to Tel Aviv, continued for several days to drive through the Ramallah area, Israeli flags hanging out of their cars, to communicate that “God gave us all the land, including Ramallah”. In Arabic “Ramallah”, actually “Ram Allah” as it is two words, means “Hill of God”, and it seems obvious from the amount of Palestinians happily living here who God has given it to. The cars that now use the bypass road, a mere handful, choose to do so without Israeli military escort, as if unaware that the Palestinian population are not avid supporters of their land expropriation and racist arrogance towards them.
Racial hatred
Settlement security chief Nahum Korman (pictured left) from Hader Betar, another Jewish residential installation situtated to the west of Beit Jala near Bethlehem kicked and, with his gun butt, beat to death Hilmi Shoushi, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy from inside the Green Line, on his way home from school on October 27th. In front of several Palestinian villagers. In an initial statement by “Judea and Samaria” police spokeman Boaz Goldenberg, the telling question that arose was whether there had been “any Jewish witnesses”.
Palestinian witnesses reported that the boy was simply walking along with two friends when Korman’s four-wheel-drive vehicle sped into the village of Husan and he stopped to chase after them on foot. Earlier, stones had been thrown at settlers’ cars and Korman seemed to be out for retribution, as he certainly had not seen Hilmi or anyone else throw a stone. An article in the Friday 1 November 1996 edition of the Israeli Yediot Aharnot newspaper quoted Korman as saying, “Not only didn’t I kill the boy, but I did the utmost to save his life.” His lawyers denied he hit the boy at all. His brother, Ya’acov, stated that Nahum’s own children had been stoned as if that was somehow relevant and that he “believed in [his] brother’s goodness.” Korman was later remanded and charged with manslaughter. He’ll be out of jail before any Palestinian currently serving time for a comparible crime, that’s for sure. Women outside the 1 November hearing carried placards quoting from Bialik: “The devil has not created a revenge for the blood of a small child.”
Don't cross me...
A few weeks ago as I was passing the Ramallah bypass road, a settler car waited to cross the Ramallah-Birzeit road. There were no military vehicles, no checkpoints at this strategic node whose introduction the Palestinian Authority unthinkingly agreed to in the Oslo 2 negotiations. The car’s sole occupant, a 30-something Jewish woman wearing a broad-rimmed red hat styled more suitably for Ascot, seemed dressed to underline her privledge as one of the West Bank’s first class citizens. As she accelerated unconcerned across the road and down the valley bypass road towards Tel Aviv, she clearly did not feel it important to consider the resentment felt by those whose path she had just crossed.
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Digital photos © Nigel Parry. Korman photo from AP.