A 24 year-old Palestinian was hit in the head from a live round of bullets Saturday in the village of Asira al-Qibliya. B’Tselem footage of the event shows the settlers shooting at the young man, and Israeli soldiers standing by them – doing nothing to prevent it.
According to B’Tselem, the incident started at around 16:30 Saturday, when a group of settlers descended from the extremist settlement Itzhar towards the Palestinian village (as seen in the first video below). According to eye witnesses the settlers – some of them masked and some armed – started fires in the fields near the village and threw stones at Palestinians who moved towards them, who also started throwing stones at the settlers.
Videos shot by residents of Asira al-Qibliya and B’Tselem show a fire in the fields, settlers and Palestinians in confrontation, and soldiers standing near the settlers, yet mostly uninvolved. Amongst the settlers are three people armed with two rifles and one hand-gun, one of them wearing what seems to be a police hat. According to B’Tselem, one of the rifles is a Tavor – commonly seen in the hands of Israeli soldiers.
At one point (between 0:40-0:55 in the video below) one of the settlers is seen aiming his rifle at something, then Palestinians start throwing stones at him, and then he and his partner open intensive fire towards the stone throwers. A soldier nearing the settlers is seen running away back to the direction he and other soldiers were coming from, not preventing the shooting in any way. After a man in a green shirt is hit the soldiers pull back, Palestinians evict the man, and the woman with the camera is heard saying the man was shot in the head (Arabic). It would later be found out that the man is 24 year-old Fathi Asira, who is now in a hospital in Nablus. His condition is defined as stable.
It is worth mentioning that throughout the video soldiers are not seen trying to stop the settlers, nor disperse the two crowds in any way, although their intervention could have prevented the injury. It is unclear from the videos who exactly started the fire, as one can see several settlers trying to put it out, and also a Palestinian fire truck. However, the fire is destroying Palestinian fields very close to the village, and did not appear in the first video showing the settlers’ approach – two facts that might support the Palestinians’ claim that it was started by settlers.
The settlement of Itzhar is notorious for its radical extremism, as well as for the many attacks carried by settlers against Palestinians in neighboring villages. The settlement was also attacked itself by Palestinians, including residents of Asira al-Qibilya.
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XYZ
Leen-
(1)-Is there no end of political correctness? What is wrong with saying Arabs were master merchants? Is that “racist”? Is it not a fact. So were Jews. So what?
Wait, I just realized it. You just proved my point about you supporting Tariq Ramadan’s Red-Green alliance. Since they include Left/Progressives who claim to be “anti-capitalist”, then it WOULD be insulting to say that Arabs were merchants.
One can never know when one is going to trip over political correctness.
(2) You confirmed my point that there is no reason to post problematic stories like this one about the shooting and burning fields. From you POV, and that of Haggai and all the other nice people here, it doesn’t matter what the settlers do and no matter how nice they are…they are inherently criminals.
max
@ELISABETH,
As I wrote above, the post is not about what you describe above (part of which I agree with you) but about a specific incident.
I pointed out, that in this specific incident there’s an important part that’s unclear and yet is presumed one-sided, by you amongst others.
This presumption of guilt I refer to as ‘Israel wrong, Palestine right’.
It’s (now) clear to me that you’re not a blind anti-Israeli, so I apologize if I gave this impression and would suggest that you read your statements with the eyes of a reader that isn’t necessarily of your background opinion (I assume, of course, that you’re not here to only converse with like-minded people)
max
XYZ, given his known ideological background, Haggai was even-handed in the article.
The interesting – but futile – question is what’s the balance between creating awareness and providing a platform for hate speech, which can’t be expected to lead to a solution
Devin
Just remember South African racist government. I see the same future for settlers and racist government of Israel. The image of Jwish people destroyed by these anti human acts. These are not Jwish, these are murderer and they are full of hate. I hope Jwish people seprate themselves from these animals.
Elisabeth
Well, thank you Max. I am glad that part of the misunderstandings between us are out of the way. And I also understand that people from all over the world constantly commenting on your own country can be very, very annoying!
Greg Pollock
Max’s question, “why didn’t the soldiers intervene?” is on point. It may well be they did try to intervene.
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One soldier is clearly at furthest point. A settler moves a little closer to point, knells, and shoots (I think). The soldiers appear to be offering support for the settlers intent, at least indirectly. BUT it is as equally likely, perhaps most likely, that the soldier on point has no idea that a settler just a bit behind point has taken a stance to shoot. Once the shooting starts, the soldiers retreat, which may well be to induce the settlers to retreat.
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I see three uncertain soldiers without training as what to do; I suspect as well that they are regularly told, and define themsleves to be, settler protectors. When the settler fires, the soldiers’ prior definitions fail.
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What is clear is that the soldiers make no attempt to have the armed men stand down; throughout the seconds they rather meld into one rather uncontrolled line of defense/offense (pick what you like).
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This event appears to be a consequence of the IDF’s prior decision to encourage armed settlers in self defense. Clearly these very young soldiers were not trained to force a stand down; and there is no evidence in the videos of immediate, rushing danger to the settlers.
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IDF command policy is at failure here. This should be no surprise to command: almost always its soldiers are placed in confrontation with Palestinians (I am neutral here on why this is so); settlers have been sanctioned to carry arms with private, personal command over those arms; the soldiers, only three, neither have training nor are sufficient to push back the settler autonomy IDF command has encouraged.
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If you allow arms to private hands results such as this are inevitiable. IDF command has failed here; policy has failed here. And I think it most probable that command was warned such events would precipitate.
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Then why did IDF command allow the arming to proceed? Why are the young, only three, soldiers clueless as to how to force their armed side to stand down? These are the real questions; the answers will not be hard to find.
Rowan Berkeley
Robert Wright commented in the Atlantic Magazine: “Note how, at the 40-second mark in this video, one of the armed settlers seems to wave the soldier out of his line of fire so he can commence shooting, and the soldier seems to comply. Whether or not this reading of the clip is correct, it is an apt symbol for what is too often the relationship between settlers and soldiers.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/why-israeli-settlers-shot-an-unarmed-palestinian/257502/
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B’tzelem said: “One of the masked settlers was armed with a Tavor rifle, which is only used by infantry soldiers, raising the suspicion that he is a soldier on leave.”
sh
“It should be noted that incidents like this on in the Shomron always occur on Shabbat because the Palestinians know that the Jews don’t carry video cameras on Shabbat.”
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But the Jews do carry stones. At least in Israel they do. Throwing stones has become a “traditional” (in the sense that the Jerusalem Day’s flag shenanigans are said to be “traditional”) Shabat sport around spots like Jerusalem’s Bar Ilan junction, especially on the long Shabatot of spring and summer. So the possibility that Yitzhar settlers initiated the stone-throwing can’t be discounted.
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In the unlikely event Yitzhar does not run the fixed video cameras probably posted around it on Shabat, the forces of order might be persuaded to supply the West Bank with the overhead zeppelins they use to photograph demonstrations within the green line. Or drones – that’s if Yitzhar settlers have no objections to the evidence they are likely to confirm.
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XYZ, K9 and like-minded company, if it hasn’t been clear to you until now, it is not the settlers who are the central problem, it is the army that protects them exclusively, under the orders of governments that planted them there in the first place.
sh
@Greg Pollock – “settlers have been sanctioned to carry arms with private, personal command over those arms; ”
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You say it as though they didn’t do that already long, long before. That privilege is not unique to settlers either.
Greg Pollock
SH,
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The point is that IDF Command and Control undoubtedly was warned of this once they instituted policy encouraging private arms. Failure to train soldiers, and palce more than three on ground when private arms are sanctioned about, is a simple failure of command. You can be a IDF supporter and accept that logic.
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Anyway–ANYWAY–you look at this land, there are years of defeat ahead. I am interested in formulating as clear thought as I can. I do not gain personal legitimacy by fighting the good fight on this site. I’m trying to think years ahead. If that makes me a fool–nothing new there.
Devin
Any reason you removed my comment?
Leen
XYZ – there’s nothing wrong about saying that arabs were merchants historically or master merchants infact. But again you are making assumptions on my political ideologies SOLELY because I am arab. That is racist, the association of a political ideology to an ethnicity/religion is racist.
Again, I don’t understand what led you to believe that I support Red/Green alliance, or the left, or the progrressive, or that I am anti-capitalist, or capitalist, or socialist, or support Tariq Ramadan. If you made these assumptions based on the fact that I am arab or Muslim, then, you should stop now. I never once implied what are my political leanings are.
Secondly, of course it does not matter. If settlers engage in violence, harrassment, intimidation, their presence is illegal, then it doesn’t matter if they are the nicest people in the world. Put it this way, if your next door neighbour who was always nice and lovely to you and helpful, found out he’s a murderer or actively engages in violent confrontation or even stole the house/land he is living on, your viewpoint of him will definitely change.