West Bank Occupiers Attack Farmers

Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News

GAZA CITY, 26 October 2006 — Scores of Jewish extremist occupiers brandishing guns, rocks and metal bars in the West Bank terrorized unarmed Palestinian farmers sending many to hospitals in what has become an annual scene of violence during the olive harvest season.

Ibrahim Salah said about 30 of his family members were tending to their field west of Nablus when some 50 Israelis descended on the area wielding rocks, metal bars, and guns. He said his son Basel Salah, 31, was hit in the head with a metal bar and taken to a local hospital. According to witnesses, many others were also wounded. Each year Palestinian farmers in the West Bank are worried that fundamentalist Jewish occupiers living in illegal settlements nearby will disrupt and destroy their annual olive harvest — a mainstay of the local economy.

Israeli troops arrived shortly after the incident and dispersed the crowd, evacuating Basel Salah to a hospital in an army jeep, the army said. There were no immediate details on his condition. The incident occurred near Havat Gilad, one of 24 illegal Jewish settlements built on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said three Palestinians were wounded in yesterday’s violence. Rosenfeld blamed the Palestinian farmers for the violence saying they should have coordinated with Israeli authorities to arrange an escort. The olive harvest usually has large outputs every two years, and this year is expected to yield a bumper crop, making it essential to the economic survival of cash-strapped Palestinians under a brutal Israeli occupation. Extremist illegal Jewish occupiers are known to frequently destroy crops adding to the misery of local Palestinians.

In another development, an Associated Press photographer was released unharmed early yesterday after a harrowing day in the hands of gunmen who abducted him in Gaza and dressed him in women’s clothes before transporting him from one secret location to another.

Emilio Morenatti, 37, was brought before midnight to the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by Fatah officials. It was not immediately clear who kidnapped him, though officials said he was taken by criminal elements. The government and main Palestinian groups denounced the abduction.

Morenatti looked fatigued after his daylong ordeal. He said he was tired but otherwise unharmed.

“I’m tired but happy to have come back because there were very anguished moments,” said Morenatti.

He said the kidnappers kept him in a small room, where he was held for about four hours during which he was visited by masked men. Later he was put in a car dressed as a woman.