To return to the new Peace Now website click here.

Ha'aretz: "Twilight Zone / Five masked men"

The (Peace Now) report adds: "The settlers claim that the land is owned by land dealer Moshe Zar ... We are unable to confirm the ownership claim."

01/03/2008

By Gideon Levy
 
In a dirty and neglected room in the surgical department of Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus, an elderly shepherd lies injured, the victim of a vicious attack. Five masked men assaulted him last week. They beat him with sticks as he was tending his grazing sheep to the west of his home village of Til. The five came down from the direction of Havat Gilad, an illegal outpost in the territories, sprayed teargas in his face and at his companions, and then began hitting them with sticks, drawing blood, while he lay helpless on the ground. Now the shepherd, Hashem Hamed, has two fractures in his left arm, fractures in his skull, large stitches on his head, in front and back, and is severely traumatized.
 
His nephew, Amer Hamed, and his fellow shepherd Hussein Asida, who were there, too, have been having nightmares since the day of the attack - Christmas day, last Tuesday, December 25, 2007. Police say they have opened an investigation, "an intelligence investigation," in the words of the police spokesperson. The council head of the victims' village says it is not hard to imagine what would have happened had the situation been reversed, and someone from his village had attacked settlers in this way: The village would have been placed under curfew and arrests would have been made immediately. At Havat Gilad this week, life went on just as usual. No one was arrested, no one was questioned.
 
He is an aging bachelor who lives with his parents in his village, west of Nablus, and goes out every morning to tend his sheep. There are 40 sheep in all, and they are his whole life and his sole possessions. Last Tuesday morning he got up as usual and shortly after 8 A.M. headed out to the west with the flock. Now Hamed sits on his unmade bed in the hospital, wearing a shabby track suit, surrounded by friends and relatives who have come from the village to visit him.
 
A little after 10 A.M., he noticed several figures approaching from behind, from the direction of nearby Havat Gilad. There were five young men - three with black masks over their faces. The other two were not masked, he said. They were not carrying firearms, but had heavy sticks and a dog with them.
 
The five didn't say a word, not even when Hamed's friend Asida asked them what they wanted. When they got close to the shepherds, they started spraying tear gas in their faces from a can they had with them. Amer Hamed, 15, quickly ran away and the two older shepherds fell to the ground, their eyes burning from the gas. Then the three masked men started savagely beating Hamed with their sticks, which he describes as "like the shaft of a hoe, only bigger." They beat him on the arm and head. Soon he was bleeding profusely from the head, with two deep wounds in the front and back.
 
The beating went on for about five minutes. The strong beating the weak, attacking the helpless older man who lay on the ground, starting to lose consciousness. Thus shall be done to the shepherd who dares to graze his sheep near the illegal outpost.
 
Havat Gilad came into being in 2002. A Peace Now report from 2006 says that the place is home to four families and a changing cast of youths, and that it contains "19 portable structures and two permanent structures." The report adds: "The settlers claim that the land is owned by land dealer Moshe Zar ... We are unable to confirm the ownership claim."
 
The Sasson Report, published in March 2005, has this to say about Havat Gilad: "It is on private land (Farata village). Permit from the government or defense minister: none. Organization that allocated the land: none. Jurisdiction: none. Type of construction: seven trailers, three shipping containers, two attached bus frames with a shelter on top, a generator, two tin shacks and a stable."
 
Hamed the shepherd did not try to resist. When they finished beating him, he heard his attackers speaking Hebrew to one another - Let's go back, they said. They headed off the way they had come, toward Havat Gilad. The young shepherd had meanwhile run to the road with the idea of stopping a military vehicle to ask for help. But no military vehicle passed by. He called the family in the village and they summoned a neighbor who owned a taxi, and he came to evacuate the injured man.
 
At the hospital in Nablus, they sewed up the wounds in Hamed's head and set his broken arm. Someone in the hospital room shows us the X-rays: a double fracture in the arm and a cracked skull. The hospital medical report, signed by Dr. Abdel Karim Gawanmeh, director of the surgical department: "Hashem Hamed arrived at the hospital emergency room and said he had been beaten by settlers. His arm was bleeding. The attending doctor diagnosed a 12-cm wound in his forehead, an 8-cm wound in the back of his head, and a double fracture in the left arm." Hamed is awaiting an improvement in his diabetic condition so that he can undergo surgery on his arm.
 
Omar Shatiya, head of the Til village council, is at Hashem's bedside in Rafidiya. He says that about six months ago, another shepherd from the village, Suleiman Hamed, 63, was also beaten and ended up in the hospital. "They warn us to stay away from our olive groves and our grazing pastures and then they come and steal our olives." An olive grove was set on fire not long ago. Will you return to that area to graze your sheep? we ask Hamed. "Yes. I can't give up," he says, struggling to get to his feet, his face pale.
 
Danny Poleg, spokesman for the Judea and Samaria (Shai) district police, told Haaretz this week: "We did not receive any complaint at the time of the incident, but following our intervention, a complaint was filed in coordination with the Palestinian police. We are investigating on the intelligence level. At this stage we have no suspects because the attackers were masked. Therefore, the investigation is primarily on the intelligence level."
 
This writer would like to remind the police spokesman that there are just a handful of settlers living at Havat Gilad. It is not difficult to guess what the outcome of the police's concerted intelligence investigation will be, and it's even easier to envision what would have happened had a settler been attacked by Palestinians, just as the head of the Til village council said.
 
Amer Hamed sits at home in Til, the effects of the trauma still evident. This village of 5,000, west of Nablus, lost 18 of its sons in the second intifada. We traveled there in the company of Salma Deba'i, a researcher for B'Tselem, and Asem Asida, of the local district attorney's office. The boy told us he has had trouble sleeping at night since the incident. An 11th-grader, he had gone out with his uncle to tend the sheep during the New Year's vacation from school. He saw an Israeli car going up toward Havat Gilad and about 15 minutes later, the attackers showed up. He says that all five were masked. First they sprayed tear gas in Asida's face, and when he fell to the ground, they started beating his uncle. He tried to approach his uncle to help him, says the boy, but the masked attackers threw rocks at him and he ran away, toward the road.
 
After the attackers left, Amer called his family in the village. The shepherd Asida, 47, remembers that the boy shouted: 'My uncle's dead! My uncle's dead!" Asida also called to the boy to bring him water so he could rinse his eyes. When he opened his eyes, he saw his friend, Hamed, with whom he had been tending sheep for many years, lying on the ground, bleeding. The two of them tried to stop the bleeding from Hashem's head wounds and waited for help. "Sometimes they come on horses," says Asida. "Like a gang."
 
Omar Shatiya, the council head: "This was a savage beating. It could have ended even worse. After every such incident, the shepherds are afraid to go out with their sheep. I want to ask you: Why doesn't the army dismantle this outpost already?" His question hung in the air.