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In the line of fire By Gideon Levy Tags: settlers, Burin The most important place in the village of Burin is the fire station. There aren't a lot of other villages in the West Bank with such a well-equipped station - a fire engine, uniforms, boots, helmets and hoses. The firefighters are often called to put out the fires that are regularly set by settlers, in the village and the olive groves nearby. The surrounding landscape is black, sooty and burned. Thousands of fruit trees are wilting; one house recently needed renovation from the damage caused by a late-night fire. The fire station commander, Fadi Khader, a young man dressed in a camouflage uniform, takes a look at his calendar: The last fire in the village was on September 3, at 4:15 P.M. Construction equipment was set ablaze at the site of the new house that Abd al-Karim, a village resident, is building for himself. We visited Burin exactly 10 years ago and tried to accompany the frightened farmers to their plots of olive trees. We had just arrived there when rioters arrived from the settlement of Yitzhar, screaming and threatening us with weapons. Even the Israel Defense Forces troops that were called to the scene were forced to desist due to the threats and rifles. Advertisement "One more step and I'll shoot," one of the settler-terrorists threatened the brigade commander, who ordered a retreat. I saw this with my own eyes. And I wrote, at the end of the summer of 1998: "So who in God's name is sovereign in the occupied territories? Who is responsible for maintaining the law? For one uneasy hour, this past Sunday, the picture was as clear as day: In at least one area, between Burin and Yitzhar, the only masters are the settlers, and no one else. Not the IDF, not the Israel Police, not the Border Police. They can't do anything. They are afraid of them. "There are a group of settlers who threaten all the security forces, saying that the snipers atop the trees will shoot between the eyes anyone who takes another step," officers are told, Border Police officers are told, and the brigade commander knows. But nothing. The settlers continue on their merry way and no one stops them. No one dares violate their commands. Not the strong IDF, not the big Israel Police, not the Border Police officers, who are always so tough. "A group of innocent Palestinian farmers wants to reach the olive groves that belong to them. The settlers threaten them, the brigade commander hears them and forbids the farmers from reaching their land. Is there something illegal about the farmers accessing their land?" I asked Col. Yehuda Shaked, commander of the area. "God forbid. Of course they can enter their land," he said, smooth-talking. "But the timing, you see, the timing wasn't good." (Haaretz, August 28, 1998) Ten years have passed and nothing has changed. To this day, "the timing isn't good." Life in Burin is still life under terror. The settlers riot and the IDF and police, who are supposed to enforce security here, don't lift a finger. Terror by settlers, the security of Arabs - well, you know. In the last several weeks, settler activity is on the rise again, ever since "black Thursday," June 19, when people from Yitzhar and Bracha set fire to roughly 3,800 olive trees, of which 1,000 were ancient. Zakaria Sada, the West Bank coordinator for Rabbis for Human Rights, says that the disturbances originate primarily in the "legal" settlements of Yitzhar and Bracha, in order to divert attention from the illegal outposts. His organization is currently preparing a program to plant new trees to rehabilitate the groves. Volunteers from the organization have also helped renovate Said Najar's home, which settlers also set on fire, and to whom we will presently turn. A sooty baby's crib thrown into the yard is a silent monument to the events of that night, when the settlers set fire to the house in which the Najars and their two small children live. It was the night of July 28 - coincidentally, their wedding anniversary. Said was in a Palestinian police officers' course in Jericho; Wafa, his then-pregnant wife, was home with their 18-month-old son Arwa. We are sitting on the pretty stone porch of their old home, which overlooks a Tuscany-like view of olive and fig trees in their private orchard. In the evening, Wafa called Said and told him that angry settlers were descending from the mountain, from the direction of Bracha, which overlooks Burin. Wafa said she was scared; Said suggested she go with their son to her parent's home, so that she wouldn't be alone in the house, which overlooks the main road of the village. For safety's sake Wafa left the lights on and fled to her parents' house. Early the next morning, Said's brother called him in Jericho to come home quickly, because the house had been burned. The house was sooty and filled with smoke; two Molotov cocktails were found in the bedroom the couple share with their toddler. The bed was completely burned. Said arrived after roughly two hours, after the fire had been extinguished. He says that even today, the house still reeks of smoke, although it was renovated and whitewashed by members of Rabbis for Human Rights. The baby's bed is the last reminder of what happened. The rabbis also bought them a new bed, on which Mahmoud, the infant who was born in the meantime, also sleeps. Wafa doesn't want to stay in the house, which they rent. Said was set to build them a new place in the village, but all of his savings - 9,800 Jordanian dinars in cash - went up in the settlers' smoke. Now he has no savings and no new house. The Samaria region police said in response that they received a complaint on July 28 of a house that had been set on fire, and that they were investigating the case and looking for suspects. As for fields that have been set on fire, they said their investigation had not yielded enough evidence to press charges. Najar says that the settlers come to the village almost every day, and their terror affects all of the residents. They are particularly active on Fridays and Saturdays. A Ferguson tractor nears the yard of the house, driven by a neighboring farmer, Walid Eid, whose mustache is highlighted by the sun. Yesterday, he tells us, the settlers tried again to come to the village and were stopped by a group of Burin youths. A few days ago, they poisoned six sheep, three of which were his. Eid and other farmers are prevented from reaching parts of their land because of the threatening neighbors from Yitzhar and Bracha. They especially fear olive-picking season, which starts next month; Eid doesn't know how, if at all, he'll be able to harvest his crop, his only source of income. "We live for Al-Quds, the capital of Palestine," reads a notice at the entrance to the office of the Burin council head, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem. Ali Eid is the head of the village of 3,200 residents. "Every time there's talk of peace, there are more problems with the settlers," he says, trying to make sense of the mystery of the settler escalation over the last few weeks - not only here, but all over the West Bank. Are the settlers the only ones taking the talks between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seriously? Are they taking pains to burn fields because there has been only a very little bit of progress? From Hebron to Burin, we have recently witnessed this escalation, Eid says, which no one within Israel gets worked up about - or has probably even heard of. Sitting underneath a poster of the late Yasser Arafat, the council head spells out the recent troubles: the burning of electricity poles, the poisoning of sheep, the theft of horses, the burning of a house and the firing of "missiles" - apparently referring to mortar shells, nine of which have been launched at Burin, none of which injured anyone or caused real damage, except for terror. The first mortar shell was launched on August 1, while the entire village was at a wedding. Eid says that they know exactly from which house in Bracha the mortars are fired: the house from which the rioters usually leave. Eid says that after every incident, IDF troops come to collect the shell. Do they contact the army? No. So how does the IDF know? "Like they know when a missile is fired from Iraq," says Eid. He has managed to hold onto the remnants of one mortar, which is now on his bookshelf. It was launched from Yitzhar, he explains, and landed in the fields roughly three kilometers from the village. The Judea and Samaria District police said in response that they had not received complaints of mortar shells being fired in the vicinity, but after an incident in which a loud blast was heard, they found remnants of a flare that had been fired. No suspects were arrested. The 3,800 trees that were set ablaze in June belonged to 75 different residents of the village. Between 500 and 600 Burin residents used to travel to work in Israel daily, but no more than a tenth of that number go today. As for the council head, he has shut down the stone factory he had in Nablus, and half-a-million shekels have gone down the drain because Nablus is under siege. The response of the IDF Spokesman's Office: "Following the serious incidents in the area, the Israel Police, with the help of the IDF, initiated a series of actions against provocateurs in the settlements. In the course of these incidents, several citizens were arrested and are being dealt with by the Israel Police. The IDF always acts to keep the public order in the areas of Judea and Shomron." It's early morning. Palestine has already changed its clocks to winter time, its last means of expressing independence from Israel. The streets of the pretty old village are empty. The Burin council head sharply criticizes the police and the IDF, which does nothing, he says, to protect the village from the settler pogroms. "The army and the police don't do anything at all to defend the lives of the Palestinians. They just lie." Eid recalls the time a settler took a weapon and opened fire at the residents. The police claimed they arrested the gunman, but the villagers eventually discovered the young settler was free. Yitzhar residents forcibly seized the horse of Burin resident Iman Sufan a few months ago. He complained to the police, who told him, according to Eid, that the Yitzhar settlers claimed a horse of theirs had been stolen and until they got it back, they wouldn't release Sufan's horse. The rule of law, Yitzhar-style. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Unexpected guest Clinton cancels spot at Jewish groups' anti-Iran rally over Palin invite. Critique served cold Ex-IDF chief Ya'alon says the air force failed in the Second Lebanon War.

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