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Gaza settlers attempt to commandeer Palestinian vehicles
Police on Friday morning arrested six settlers in the southern Gaza Strip who rioted and tried to block the Gush Katif junction to Palestinian traffic during a protest against Palestinian mortar attacks.
According to Israel Defense Forces sources, the settlers threw stones at Palestinians and tried to pull Palestinian drivers out of their vehicles in attempts to commandeer them.
Police and IDF troops prevented the settlers from blocking the junction.
The incident began when some 30 settlers, most of them youths, arrived at the junction to protest against the massive Palestinian mortar shelling of Gush Katif the previous day.
There was no mortar fire on Friday after Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas vowed to take action against any future Palestinian cease-fire violations.
IDF soldiers initially allowed the settlers to demonstrate but demanded that they hold their protest in a more secure location along the side of the road.
The settlers ignored the soldiers' directives, burst into the middle of the junction and began attacking Palestinian cars.
During the incident, Palestinian militants opened fire on a nearby IDF position. There were no casualties.
In the West Bank on Friday, IDF troops operating in the Ramallah-area village of Bir Zeit arrested a wanted Palestinian man affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
IDF officer: Settlers tried to run me over
An IDF company commander in the Paratrooper Brigade said settlers attempted to run him down with a car overnight near the West Bank settlement of Itamar in the Nablus area.
The officer filed a complaint with police on Friday morning.
Israel Radio reported on Friday that an initial probe into the incident revealed that settlers did not attempt to run the officer over.
During the incident, the officer attempted to physically block a settler vehicle. According to police, the driver then reversed his vehicle and fled the scene without harming the officer, Israel Radio reported.
In response to a request from the IDF, the police have frozen its investigation into the officer's complaint in order to enable the IDF to reach an understanding with the settlers regarding the evacuation of the caravan.
An investigation revealed that settlers managed to deceive IDF troops in the area and illegally place a caravan in a settlement outpost adjacent to Itamar.
On Thursday night, the Samaria Brigade's operations officer spotted a new caravan sitting next to the settlement's front gate. He requested an explanation from local settlers and was told they intended to switch an older caravan used to house soldiers securing the outpost.
The officer agreed that the switching of the caravans could take place at 7 A.M. on Friday. However, at 5 A.M. the settlers instead brought the caravan into a nearby outpost.
IDF officers noticed what had happened and the paratrooper company commander attempted, unsuccessfully, to prevent the settlers from situating the caravan.
A number of settlers subsequently fled the scene in a vehicle and, according to the commander, attempted to run him over.
The paratrooper commander and his soldiers were also subject to verbal abuse from the settlers overnight.
"If you aren't good to us, we will kick you out of here like we kicked the [paratrooper] company out of Yitzhar," the settlers called.
In January, the IDF evacuated its post near the Yitzhar settlement, moving the paratrooper company there to a nearby base. The post was evacuated in light of increasing tension between the soldiers and Yitzhar residents.
On Friday morning, soldiers were attempting to evacuate the caravan from the settlement outpost and the IDF declared the area a closed military zone, Israel Radio reported.
Later on Friday morning, Yesha Council settler leaders promised the head of the IDF's Central Command that the caravan would be removed by early next week.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/539286.html
Police and IDF troops prevented the settlers from blocking the junction.
The incident began when some 30 settlers, most of them youths, arrived at the junction to protest against the massive Palestinian mortar shelling of Gush Katif the previous day.
There was no mortar fire on Friday after Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas vowed to take action against any future Palestinian cease-fire violations.
IDF soldiers initially allowed the settlers to demonstrate but demanded that they hold their protest in a more secure location along the side of the road.
The settlers ignored the soldiers' directives, burst into the middle of the junction and began attacking Palestinian cars.
During the incident, Palestinian militants opened fire on a nearby IDF position. There were no casualties.
In the West Bank on Friday, IDF troops operating in the Ramallah-area village of Bir Zeit arrested a wanted Palestinian man affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
IDF officer: Settlers tried to run me over
An IDF company commander in the Paratrooper Brigade said settlers attempted to run him down with a car overnight near the West Bank settlement of Itamar in the Nablus area.
The officer filed a complaint with police on Friday morning.
Israel Radio reported on Friday that an initial probe into the incident revealed that settlers did not attempt to run the officer over.
During the incident, the officer attempted to physically block a settler vehicle. According to police, the driver then reversed his vehicle and fled the scene without harming the officer, Israel Radio reported.
In response to a request from the IDF, the police have frozen its investigation into the officer's complaint in order to enable the IDF to reach an understanding with the settlers regarding the evacuation of the caravan.
An investigation revealed that settlers managed to deceive IDF troops in the area and illegally place a caravan in a settlement outpost adjacent to Itamar.
On Thursday night, the Samaria Brigade's operations officer spotted a new caravan sitting next to the settlement's front gate. He requested an explanation from local settlers and was told they intended to switch an older caravan used to house soldiers securing the outpost.
The officer agreed that the switching of the caravans could take place at 7 A.M. on Friday. However, at 5 A.M. the settlers instead brought the caravan into a nearby outpost.
IDF officers noticed what had happened and the paratrooper company commander attempted, unsuccessfully, to prevent the settlers from situating the caravan.
A number of settlers subsequently fled the scene in a vehicle and, according to the commander, attempted to run him over.
The paratrooper commander and his soldiers were also subject to verbal abuse from the settlers overnight.
"If you aren't good to us, we will kick you out of here like we kicked the [paratrooper] company out of Yitzhar," the settlers called.
In January, the IDF evacuated its post near the Yitzhar settlement, moving the paratrooper company there to a nearby base. The post was evacuated in light of increasing tension between the soldiers and Yitzhar residents.
On Friday morning, soldiers were attempting to evacuate the caravan from the settlement outpost and the IDF declared the area a closed military zone, Israel Radio reported.
Later on Friday morning, Yesha Council settler leaders promised the head of the IDF's Central Command that the caravan would be removed by early next week.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/539286.html
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Mazuz publicized his position one day after rightist hecklers verbally abused and subsequently slashed tires of a car belonging to Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu had to be rushed away from a wedding celebration east of Tel Aviv on Thursday night after a group of disengagement-plan opponents verbally assaulted him and slashed a tire on his car.
Mazuz also announced that in accordance with orders issued prior to the incident, police will be instructed to handle the matter quickly, forcefully, and to the full extent of the law.
Police in Rishon Lezion have detained a 17-year-old Netanya resident who is suspected of being one of the activists who shouted in Netanyahu's direction. It remains unclear whether the youth was one of those involved in vandalism.
The settlers' Yesha Council on Friday morning condemned the verbal assault against the finance minister and vandalism of his vehicle.
"Violence and the use of force are not part of our way and we condemn it wholeheartedly," the council said in a statement.
The youths involved, who were not residents of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad community, approached the minister as he was leaving the event, and shouted slogans against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank.
A group, shouting that "Jewish blood is not cheap," tried to assault Netanyahu.
Upon reaching his car, Netanyahu noticed one of its tires had been slashed and he left the wedding in another vehicle.
Netanyahu said after the incident that "with all the understanding I have for these people's distress, there is no room for violence in the public debate."
Police detained the cameraman who filmed the wedding, hoping to identify the would-be assailants in the footage, Israel Radio reported.
"The people who were there were not local residents. Anybody who knows the ways of Chabad and its basic values knows that this sort of thing could not be done by a Chabad Hasid," community spokesman Menachem Brod told Israel Radio.
This was the second such incident this week. Education Minister Limor Livnat was accosted earlier in the week by Kach supporters at a memorial for Yair Stern, commander of the pre-state underground movement Lehi, and had to be whisked away from the Tel Aviv cemetery by security personnel.
Sharon told fellow Likud party members on Thursday of threats he had received and slogans saying that his late wife, Lili, was waiting for him to join her. He berated fellow ministers for not speaking out against the threats.
"I was shocked, but what has stunned me even more was that I did not see any minister or member of Knesset open their mouth on the matter," Sharon said.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/539211.html
According to the settlers, Palestinians should not be allowed to move freely within the Gaza Strip while mortar shells and Kassams are falling on their settlements.
The Tancher Route, a highway, connects northern and southern Gaza.
According to IDF sources, the settlers clashed with Palestinian youths in the area and continued their protest despite intelligence that snipers intended to harm the demonstrators.
Security forces who arrived at the scene detained four demonstrators for questioning, according to Army Radio.
The route was reopened to traffic in the afternoon.
Meir Dana, one of the settlers who was arrested at the junction, said, "Our feeling is that there is some sort of desire on the part of the administration to turn every small demonstration into a big event. We only came to demonstrate for a quarter of an hour and there were arrests immediately. If the mortar shells have not broken us over the course of years, policemen's blows will definitely not break us. We will continue and fight until justice arrives and there will be a war without compromise on the mortar [shell attacks]."
The IDF responded to Dana's accusation saying that the security force's policy is usually to allow demonstrations, but when they get out of control and pose a risk to the lives of the demonstrators and to security personnel, then they must act quickly to disperse the demonstrators and reduce the risk.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1108091970735
There's more news here about israel than there is about san francisco and the bay area.
It's ridiculous.
Seroiusly, who gives a crap that on the other side of planet earth, in the desert, some guys tried to steal some police cars?
How does this effect you outside of the region? The Bush administrations crackdown on civil liberties and wars of agression are part of his "war on terrorism" that has a lot to do with angers between the Islamic world and the US over US stands on Palestinians. If you know someone who died in 9/11, Afghanistan or has died in Iraq their deaths are indirectly tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.