Settlers kill girl in rampage after funeral

IN THE most serious incident of settler violence during two years of Middle East fighting, a Palestinian girl was killed and at least nine other people injured yesterday when a funeral in Hebron turned into an anti-Arab rampage.

The dead girl was Nivin Jamjoum, 14, who was shot in the head by a settler while on her porch, according to Palestinian reports. Another child, eight-year-old Ahmad Natshe, was in the intensive care unit at Hebron’s Ahli Hospital after being stabbed in the chest in his house by a settler, according to Salih Nassar, the hospital’s administrative director. Ahmad Idris, also eight and from the same area, was treated for a gunshot wound in the arm, Mr Nassar said.

There were conflicting accounts of how the violence began, although it is clear a desire for vengeance was running high after a Friday night shooting by militants from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction killed four settlers, including a child, at Yatta.

One of those killed was Elazar Leibovich, a soldier and one of the 400 settlers who live in the midst of more than 100,000 Palestinians in Hebron, hoping to transform it into a Jewish city. The settlers believe Abraham’s purchase of the city in the Bible gives Jews exclusive rights to it.

In the settlement of Psagot, near Ramallah, Joseph and Hanna Dickstein and their nine-year-old son, Shova-El, who died in the same Fatah shooting, were buried yesterday.

Adding to the explosive mood was the fact that yesterday was the anniversary of large-scale killings by Arabs in 1929 of members of Hebron’s century-old Jewish community.

That outburst of violence spelled the demise of the Jewish presence in the city, until militant settlers re-established the enclave, first near Hebron, and then, with the backing of Ariel Sharon, inside the biblical city.

Many of the settlers revere the memory of Baruch Goldstein, a physician who gunned down 29 Palestinians during mosque prayers in 1994.

Hebron’s Palestinian mayor, Mustafa Natshe, said the violence began on Saturday night, when settlers set fire to two houses belonging to the Sharbati family, and stopped the fire brigade from reaching them.

He said that settlers yesterday had "attacked Palestinians in the streets" and also attacked Palestinian houses.

But a settler spokesman, Moshe Ben-Zimra, said the Palestinians had started the violence by throwing stones, boulders and metal bars at Israeli mourners. He said soldiers had fired in the air, further heating up the atmosphere.

"I call what happened on Friday night a massacre, and today we are marking the massacre of 1929," Mr Ben-Zimra said.

"There is a continuum between these two massacres. They do not want Jews here and want to keep murdering us until we are in the sea. Even while we were burying our dead, they threw stones."

He said the government was not doing enough to combat Arabs and urged that all Yatta residents being expelled.

Reuters reports: The US civil rights leader the Rev Jesse Jackson yesterday called for the Palestinians to adopt non-violent forms of resistance to end Israeli occupation.

Mr Jackson, who describes himself as an impartial "bridge-builder" visiting the Middle East on a peace mission, also called on Israel to halt settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as a key to renewing peace talks frozen for nearly two years.

Mr Jackson met the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, yesterday. He is also to hold talks with the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.

"We hope that in talking with Mr Arafat and other leaders ... that they will see the value of non-violence, not as an act of submission or surrender, but a form of resistance to shift the struggle back away from the military to the [peace] process," Mr Jackson told reporters.