– Gaza Withdrawal...will it bring peace?

After Gaza, fear rises of West Bank violence
By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff

SHILO, West Bank -- Minutes after Asher Weissgan, a Jewish settler, fatally shot four of his Palestinian co-workers in this West Bank settlement, he calmly told a security officer that he hoped the killings would stop the removal of settlers from the Gaza Strip that Israeli forces had begun that morning.

The shooting on Aug. 17 occurred less than two weeks after an Israeli Army deserter opposed to the pullout gunned down four Arabs on a bus in northern Israel.

Such attacks have sharpened fears that fallout from Gaza will spark a new wave of violence in the West Bank, which now takes center stage in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the Israeli government contemplates pulling out of more West Bank settlements, some settlers expect Palestinian militants to redouble their attacks, and Palestinians expect more violence from increasingly embattled settlers.

Contentious as the Gaza pullout was, the stakes are higher in the West Bank. Palestinians here live more closely intertwined with more than 220,000 settlers, many of them more zealous than the 8,500 settlers forced out of Gaza.

The Israeli-occupied West Bank is central to the religious claims of Jews and Muslims alike, and Palestinians want it to be the heart of a future independent state.

The killings have bewildered remaining co-workers at the factory in the hilltop settlement of Shilo where Weissgan worked, which had been a rare oasis of relative harmony between Palestinians and settlers. They have left Shilo's leaders trying to convince their Palestinian neighbors -- some of whom quickly vowed revenge -- that Weissgan did not act on their behalf.

But the deaths have done nothing to soften the opposing camps in Shilo and the Palestinian villages that surround it. Nor do the sentiments expressed here suggest that the Gaza pullout weakened hard-liners on both sides, as the Israeli government had hoped.

Sitting in his living room, which opens on spectacular views over the Palestinian town of Turmus Aya, Yochai Greenglick, 24, a religious student and member of Shilo's defense force, brushed off the notion that the Gaza pullout sets a precedent for removing settlers from the occupied West Bank. Rather, he said, it is a blueprint for someday moving Palestinians to other Arab countries.

''The only places where Arabs and Jews can live together are [areas] where Arabs know their place," he said earlier, citing Haifa, a city that has been part of Israel since its founding in 1948, where he feels that Arabs ''don't act like it will be theirs some day."

Down the hill, sipping tea at his nephew's dress shop in Turmus Aya, Mohammed Najeeb said it was not enough for Israel to leave Gaza and the more isolated settlements in the West Bank, as the government is contemplating. Israel, he said, should leave the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas it captured along with Gaza in the 1967 war, and then, for good measure, Jews should be driven from the region entirely.

''We don't want to see them," he said. ''This is our country." A renewed campaign of violence in the West Bank is ''the only way" to push out the settlements, Najeeb said. ''It will make life harder, but in the end we will get rid of them."

Even those most inclined to engage in dialogue with settlers -- the families of Palestinians who worked alongside Weissgan and other Jews making aluminum window frames -- now suspect their trust was misplaced.

''For 10 years, he was my friend," said Rawhi Kassab, 42, the lone survivor of Weissgan's rampage, whose face is swollen from the bullet that grazed his right cheek from his earlobe to the corner of his mouth.

''I thought there were some Jews who were good," he said, at his home in the village of Qaryut. ''Now it is hard for me to believe."

Settlement security forces across the West Bank are training to defend against stepped-up Palestinian attacks. Groups such as Hamas maintain their rocket and machine-gun attacks on Gaza settlements and nearby Israeli towns forced Israel out of Gaza and have vowed to train the same assaults on the larger West Bank. At the same time, human rights groups warn that settler attacks on Palestinian villages spiked in the run-up to the withdrawal from Gaza and four small settlements in the northern West Bank that was completed Wednesday.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/08/29/after_gaza_fear_rises_of_west_bank_violence?mode=PF
In the past two weeks, settlers trashed a Palestinian gas station near the evacuated settlement of Sanur, took over two houses in the village of Burka near the settlement of Homesh, and damaged property in several other villages, according to B'Tselem and Yesh Din, two Israeli human rights groups that are monitoring the attacks. Israeli forces responded relatively quickly to the attacks, but continued vigilance is needed, the groups said.

Marc Prowisor, chief security coordinator for Shilo and the surrounding settlements, said he quickly told neighboring villagers that Weissgan's attack was ''an isolated incident."

''This is not the way Shilo feels," he said.

But he said Palestinians had already thrown rocks at settlers in retaliation, and added, ''I expect my people, if fired on, to fire back."

Prowisor, 42, who commands quick-response teams of settlers armed and funded by the government, said settlers are convinced they have been betrayed by the Israeli Army and must rely on themselves for protection.

He said he believes Israel purposely avoided a forceful response against attacks on Gaza settlements in order to ''demoralize" settlers there and make them easier to remove. If West Bank settlements are attacked, he said, he expects Israel's response will be similarly muted. In that case, he said, settler attacks against Palestinians will be hard to prevent.

''I might not necessarily be able to control the feelings and emotions of some people here," he said. ''If it becomes hard for us to travel on the roads, it might become hard for Arabs to travel on the roads. My ambulances don't get through, their ambulances don't get through."

Meanwhile, settlers plan to keep expanding their towns, in violation of international law that forbids building on occupied territory. They plan to attract more diverse residents in an effort to win more backing from Israeli society, said Jacob Moshe-Levy, security coordinator for Shvut Rahel, the settlement next to Shilo.

Weissgan, 38, moved to Shvut Rahel after being recruited in the 1990s as part of that effort, Moshe-Levy said. He did not stand out as particularly religious, and invited his Palestinian co-workers to his house in violation of a rule banning Arabs from the town, according to settlers and Palestinians. He almost never spoke of politics. But in recent months, Kassab said, Weissgan began cultivating unused Palestinian land, and brushed off Kassab when he questioned the morality of the move. As the Gaza pullout approached, Kassab said, Weissgan asked him if he would be angry if he were kicked off his land.

''Of course," Kassab replied, thinking of his father, who said settlers took over his olive groves in 2002. ''I would die for my land."

On Aug. 17, the day the army began forcibly removing the settlers, Kassab said, he shared coffee and cigarettes with Weissgan, who offered to pay him back for some olive oil and hummus Kassab had brought him from his village.

At the end of the day, four Palestinian workers piled into a van for Weissgan to drive them home, as he often did. Kassab recalled him saying that he wanted to die because he was ''bored" with life in the settlement. Weissgan pulled up to a security guard post and got out. Security officials said Weissgan grabbed an M-16 rifle from a guard.

Kassab saw nothing amiss until he heard shots. He saw Mohammed Hassan Mansour, 53, and Bassam Tawafsheh, 27, slump in their seats.

''Then I saw Asher with a gun. He shot at me," he said.

Weissgan also shot Osama Tawafsheh, 33, who died in the hospital. He then walked into the factory, past shocked Jewish workers, and shot the only remaining Palestinian, Khalil Saleh, 42, who shared Weissgan's work table.

Weissgan then turned himself in to Moshe-Levy, who allowed him to keep the M-16 until they arrived at a police station.

''He said he was at one with what he did, and he did it because of the disengagement," Moshe-Levy recalled. He said Weissgan told him, ''Today there will be five funerals" -- he then named the hometowns of his Arab co-workers, thinking he had killed Kassab, too -- ''and the process will stop."

Instead, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel branded the attack ''Jewish terrorism."

Outside a court hearing the next day, Weissgan said, ''I'm not sorry for what I did. I hope someone also kills Sharon," The Jerusalem Post reported. Weissgan's lawyer plans to argue he is mentally disturbed.

But in the village of Sinjil, where the Hamas candidate won the mayor's office in recent elections, residents have no doubt the attack was part of a plot against Palestinians. The faces of the Tawafsheh brothers are plastered on walls on posters that praise them as martyrs.

Osama's widow, Aisha, showed pictures of her husband posing with his Jewish co-workers.

''They are treacherous," she said. ''They use us only for their own interests."

''Palestinians should take revenge," said Osama's sister, Nadia, sitting in a parlor decorated with pictures of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and a map of Arab villages wiped out after the formation of Israel. ''We hope operations against [the settlers] will start soon."

Eli Barasher, the factory owner, called several times to offer condolences, Osama's widow said, but was told, ''If you come here, you may never get back."

Back at the factory, Barasher finds himself caught between death threats from Sinjil and some neighbors he feels are insufficiently disgusted by the attacks.

One Shilo man, Barasher recalled, stood in the distance while Weissgan reenacted the crime for police, and shouted to the suspect, ''I love you!"

Barasher said he retorted, ''Because of this man, you and I, and our wives and children, are in danger."

Convinced Shilo will be dismantled some day, he fears his 20-year-old business is mortally wounded. ''The factory is a cemetery," he said.

Kassab visited Barasher recently. But Kassab fears he will never be accepted back at work. ''They will think I want to take revenge," he said.

Globe correspondents Sa'id Ghazali and Joey Kraminer contributed to this report.