In practice, the soldiers' orders, official and unofficial, are to not interfere with, or arrest, settlers, so they often impose 24-hour curfews on the Palestinians and turn a blind eye when the settlers ransack homes and businesses, and assault Palestinians. B'Tselem, the Israeli Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, calls it 'an undeclared policy of leniency and compromise toward Israeli civilians who harm Palestinians'.
Occasionally, settlers are attacked, usually stabbed, by Palestinians, either inside the old city or while driving on the Israli-only bypass roads that lead to it. The settlers always retaliate. Four Hebron settlers were killed in a road ambush in July and their funeral procession turned into a riot .
A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead on her balcony. A six-year-old boy was stabbed in his back. An American-Jewish photographer, documenting the parade, was beaten and his cameras were smashed. When Israeli police intervened, they were attacked. The violence was so severe that Colonel Moshe Givati, an adviser on settlement security for public security minister Uzi Landau, termed the rioting 'a pogrom against the Arabs of Hebron, with no provocation on the Palestinian side'.
The settlers have picked on Hebron because it is where Abraham - father to both Judaism and Islam - is buried. They moved soon after the city, along with the rest of the West Bank, was occupied by the Israelis after the six-day war in 1967. Many consider the city to be holier than Jerusalem and have vowed to sabotage any land-for-peace deal that requires them to leave.
Occasionally, settlers are attacked, usually stabbed, by Palestinians, either inside the old city or while driving on the Israli-only bypass roads that lead to it. The settlers always retaliate. Four Hebron settlers were killed in a road ambush in July and their funeral procession turned into a riot .
A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead on her balcony. A six-year-old boy was stabbed in his back. An American-Jewish photographer, documenting the parade, was beaten and his cameras were smashed. When Israeli police intervened, they were attacked. The violence was so severe that Colonel Moshe Givati, an adviser on settlement security for public security minister Uzi Landau, termed the rioting 'a pogrom against the Arabs of Hebron, with no provocation on the Palestinian side'.
The settlers have picked on Hebron because it is where Abraham - father to both Judaism and Islam - is buried. They moved soon after the city, along with the rest of the West Bank, was occupied by the Israelis after the six-day war in 1967. Many consider the city to be holier than Jerusalem and have vowed to sabotage any land-for-peace deal that requires them to leave.