Rajoub: Settlers who attack Palestinian areas won't get out alive
Palestine-Israel, Local, 3/16/1998

For the first time in four years I had to use the traditional head dress, Kufiyyah, as a sign of identification on my car's dashboard. Back in the seven years of Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation, Israeli cars with yellow plates were considered target for Palestinian stones and Molotov cocktails. The phenomenon is back in Hebron where violent clashes over the past week threatened to drive the city back into a new stage of intifada.

Hebron is the only West Bank city where Jewish settlers still maintain a presence which has always been seen as the major detonator that would trigger a new wave of violence in the region. "Next time, if attacks by Israeli soldiers or settlers continue on Palestinians, blood will be spilled and it won't only be Palestinian," warned Colonel Jibril Rajoub, commander of the Palestinian Preventive Security in the West Bank, who spoke at a press conference in Hebron Monday.

"Any settler who breaks into PNA areas with the intention of attacking Palestinians with fire weapons should know that he won't have chances to walk out alive," Rajoub threatened in what was seen as the harshest Palestinian reaction to the shooting incident last Tuesday when Israeli soldiers shot dead three Palestinian workers returning to their home town of Dura near Hebron.

Colonel Rajoub said that even before the shooting incident took place, Palestine submitted an official written complaint to the Israeli army against the behavior of those soldiers manning the check-post where the shooting took place. "People have complained of how badly they were treated by those soldiers and we passed their complaint on to the Israeli army. On that same day the shooting took place and we strongly believe it could have been averted had the Israeli army reacted swiftly to our complaint," he said. Rajoub added that also on last Friday, there was no reason for the shooting to take place in Abu Sneineh neighborhood in Hebron where Jewish settlers and Palestinian citizens clashed. "The incident was planned in advance," he said, "because there were so many Jewish settlers who never lived in the area and were all present in the neighborhood. They have come with the intention of instigating clashes with the Palestinians and that is why we hold the Israeli government responsible for whatever similar action occurs in the future."

The shooting of the three workers, said Palestinian Minister of Information, Yasser Abed Rabbo, was a premeditated crime and demanded that Israel and Palestine form a joint commission of inquiry to investigate why those workers were killed in cold blood. Abed Rabbo said: "The crime and the subsequent clashes cannot be forgotten or bypassed. There is an attempt by the Israeli government to portray the incident as a mistake or a fault without even saying who is responsible. And the lack of appropriate measures against those who opened fire encourages Israeli soldiers to commit similar crimes in the future." He noted that in Israeli prisons, there are no Israelis who were convicted of killing Palestinians. "They all had been released under various pretexts," he said, "including the killer of Hilmi Shoushe, the Palestinian boy from Hussan near Bethlehem who was beaten to death on his head by a settler using his gun butt." Abed Rabbo added that also those who attacked Palestinian men and houses in the latest clash in Hebron last Friday had been released and the police is not even doing enough to bring them to justice.

Israel had issued subpoenas for a number of Jewish settlers who were involved in the Friday clashes in Hebron but Abed Rabbo argued that there is not a clear law of deterrence against Jewish settlers or soldiers who kill Palestinians and those even feel there is a systematic campaign of cover up to help them out of any legal complications they might find themselves in. Though the shooting near Tarkumya in the Hebron area was not the first incident in which Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers, Abed Rabbo insisted the incident had formed "an intersection or a crossroads and both the Israeli government and army should bear responsibility of what had happened."

Only one day before the scheduled arrival to the region of British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, Abed Rabbo said there is no need for any new European of US initiatives arguing that what needs to be done is to force the Israeli government to honor and implement all the signed interim agreements with the Palestinians. He called for international protection of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation saying that the situation in those areas is much worse than in Kosovo, where the US has been calling for a direct intervention to protect the civilians there. "Where on earth can anyone find a single country where there are military roadblocks as much as those the Israeli army scatters all over the West Bank?"

Both Rajoub and Abed Rabbo insisted there were no standing orders to Palestine to ban anti-Israel demonstrations and Rajoub stressed it is the full right of the Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories to protest against the Israeli occupation. "In PNA areas, however, we tend to control the whole campaign of protest because we know there are attempts to pull our people into open and violent clashes with the Israeli soldiers and settlers causing a major bloodshed among them." Rajoub said his duty and the duty of all Palestinian security officers and soldiers is to maintain the safety of Palestinians living within Palestinian areas and to prevent provocative actions that might lead to further bloodshed." Abed Rabbo, who spoke at the same press conference, said there was no decision to ban protests "yet there are attempts to provoke the people and our duty is to prevent being drawn into clashes that would end with more killings and massacres."

Stressing there won't be any form of security cooperation with the Israeli army in the Hebron area until after those responsible for the Tarqumya killings are put on trial, Rajoub said that Palestine had to operate in its capacity as the only sovereign authority in its areas, but in the rest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, people have their full right to protest against the Israeli occupation."

Previous Stories:
  25 wounded by Israelis including several journalists in clashes   (3/14/1998)
  Tense Friday as a result of Bloody Tuesday   (3/13/1998)
  Christian peacemakers under threat in Hebron   (1/22/1998)

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