Angry Jewish Settlers Bury Ambush Victims

ITZHAR, West Bank — On a high, stony hillside that overlooks half a dozen Arab villages, more than a thousand Jewish settlers, all angry and most armed, laid to rest Wednesday two of their own who were gunned down in an ambush as they patrolled this community’s tense perimeter.

The brutal killings shocked Israel and cast doubt on the already dim chances for any further advancement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process after two weeks of direct talks between negotiators.

When the two young men already lay wounded in their pickup truck shortly before midnight Tuesday, authorities said, they were finished off with gunshots fired at point-blank range, in the latest burst of violence in the seemingly boundless conflict over this land.

Israel blamed “Palestinian terrorists” and said tracks from the ambush scene led toward one of the nearby Arab villages. Several Palestinian communities were placed under a strict military curfew, and dozens of Palestinians were detained and questioned, but the assailants apparently had already made their getaway.

The slayings led to calls for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon any thought of ever ceding more West Bank land to Arab control, as envisioned in the 1993 Oslo peace accords and proposed by the United States.

“It will be impossible to defend the settlements if we hand over 13% of the land,” warned parliament member Nissan Salomiansky in an interview. “This attack should open our eyes, and we should tell the government: Don’t dare to withdraw.”

Netanyahu said the attack “strengthens our conviction and our insistence that the Palestinian Authority must carry out its commitments to us, the chief of which is to fight terrorism.”

Netanyahu also promised the settlers of Itzhar that, for the first time in years, they will be allowed to expand their community, where about 80 Jewish families live in modest bungalows atop a fortified hilltop--surrounded by Arab villages and only four miles up the road from the Palestinian metropolis of Nablus.

Itzhar, which has a reputation as one of the most militant Jewish settlements in the West Bank lands seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, is at the center of the debate over a further Israeli pullout from the West Bank. It would be among those communities that would be left isolated under the pullback plans now under discussion with the Palestinians.

In direct talks that began July 19, Netanyahu’s government has indicated that it is willing to turn over 10% of West Bank land to full or partial Palestinian control in exchange for Palestinian concessions that would include tougher measures to thwart anti-Israeli attacks. In addition, Israel would designate 3% as a “nature preserve,” where no construction would be allowed and over which Israel would maintain security control.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat is holding out for at least 13%, an amount that was proposed as a fair compromise by U.S. mediators after more than a year of deadlock in previous U.S.-brokered talks over the size of the pullback.

The talks have foundered in recent days, with the Palestinians accusing the Israelis of stalling and failing to offer new ideas. There was no indication when the negotiations might resume after the latest violence. An advisor to Arafat, Nabil Amr, said the attack showed the price of delay in achieving a peace settlement. That means “leaving the field open for others to do everything they want to end the whole process,” he warned.

The Itzhar settlement, about 25 miles north of Jerusalem, was established in 1985 and has been embroiled for most of that time in clashes with neighboring Arab villages--and occasionally with the Israeli army.

According to newspaper archives, Jewish settlers from Itzhar over the years have been charged with shooting at or beating their Arab neighbors and setting Arab buildings, fields and even a mosque on fire. In the late 1980s, settlers were charged with the shooting deaths of two Palestinian teenagers in the area. Last year, Israeli authorities took the unusual step of demolishing buildings at the settlement that they said were put up illegally.

According to security sources quoted by Israel TV, the motive for the attack Tuesday most likely was a land dispute over plans by Itzhar residents to expand their settlement. The road on which the two young men were slain, nearly two miles from the settlement’s main housing complex, had recently been cut into the side of the hill and was being patrolled by settlers day and night to demonstrate their ownership, according to TV reports.

The victims, Harel Binoun, 18, and Shlomo Livman, 24, were on a routine nighttime patrol, armed with a rifle, when they were attacked. They were talking on a cell phone to a friend. The friend heard gunshots and voices shouting in Arabic, and then was disconnected. Soon after, the pickup truck was found, riddled by at least 13 bullets, and the bodies had been pulled outside.

This was “a very carefully planned ambush and not an armed ring of two or three people who happened to chance upon the car,” said Gen. Moshe Yaalon, chief of the Israeli army’s central command. He said terrorists had been monitoring the patrols.

Politicians and leaders of the settler movement stood in solemn silence at the graveside in Itzhar, where amplifiers picked up the sounds of relatives sobbing. The two were buried in a cemetery newly created for them. In fact, the bulldozer that cleared the hillside left only minutes before the ceremony began.

“A cemetery is a clear sign that this settlement is here for posterity,” said grim-faced parliament member Rehavam Zeevi.

But at a roadside cafe not far from the turnoff to Itzhar, a Palestinian businessman sounded equally determined. Calling the nearby Jewish settlement “a thorn in the throat and a stone in the water,” he said it will continue to be opposed by the Palestinians.

“Our struggle is an ultimate one,” said Nasr abu Mohammed. “It will last until Judgment Day.”