April 21, 2006
by Michele Green

JERUSALEM – A group of Jewish settlers attacked five foreign activists, including members of two church-sponsored monitoring teams, who were escorting Palestinian girls from a school in the divided West Bank city of Hebron, team members said.

Shouting "We will kill you!," about 15 young Jewish settlers threw stones and kicked the foreign activists, who sustained minor injuries, mostly bruises, according to a spokesperson for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).

"They were escorting girls from a school which is directly opposite the Tel Rumeida Jewish settlement. The monitors take the schoolgirls to and from school each day," said EAPPI spokesperson Gemma Abbs. "They (the settlers) were waiting for them to come out of the school when the incident happened."

Abbs said about 15 young men disembarked from a bus at the settlement and immediately began stoning the fleeing monitors.

"They threw stones at their backs as they tried to run away," Abbs said.

EAPPI, a program of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, identified its two accompaniers as Karin Laier of Germany and Tore Ottesen of Norway.

Three other international activists working with the International Solidarity Movement and Christian Peacemaker Teams also were among those attacked, witnesses said. Among them was a 79-year-old woman who was kicked by the mob, Abbs said.

Israeli authorities were not immediately available for comment.

Hebron, the traditional burial site of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, is home to about 500 Jewish settlers who live in fortified compounds among more than 120,000 Palestinians. The settlers, considered among the most militant in the West Bank, often are accused of harassing the local Palestinian population, foreign activists and even Israeli soldiers.

Abbs said the team in Hebron is subject to constant harassment. Earlier this month, a Swiss accompanier was wounded by settlers and had to have seven stitches in her head, she said.

The EAPPI program supports Palestinians and Israelis working for peace by monitoring and reporting violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, offering protection by accompanying local citizens in daily activities, and advocating with churches for a peaceful end to the Israeli occupation. The WCC-coordinated program was founded in 2002.

Presbyterian News Service