Kim Bullimore
In the month since Israel's unilateral "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military has killed 24 Palestinians, including three children, arrested at least 700 Palestinians and continued to use airborne missile strikes to assassinate Palestinian resistance leaders in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
In response to the killings, arrests and "targeted" assassinations, on October 16 Palestinian resistance fighters carried out a drive-by shooting attack on Israeli settlers, killing three settlers and wounding seven others.
The attack occurred near Gush Etzion, one three major Israeli settler-colonies built illegally on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.
Responsibility for the Gush Etzion shootings was claimed by the Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the mainstream Fatah movement.
In retaliation, the Israel occupation authorities imposed further travel and movement restrictions on Palestinians living in the West Bank.
The Israeli occupation forces also cancelled the provision of a military escort to protect Palestinian children on their way to school from being attacked by Israeli settlers from the illegal settler-colonies of Maon and Havat Maon.
The provision of an Israeli military escort for Palestinian school children had been originally implemented after Israeli settlers dressed in ski masks and armed with clubs, chains and rocks had repeatedly attacked international peace volunteers from the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT), who had previously escorted the children.
In September 2004, two CPT volunteers, Kim Lamberty and Chris Brown, were hospitalised with broken legs and arms as a result of settler attacks. Brown also sustained a punctured lung.
The Israeli military and police at the time blamed the CPT volunteers for the settlers' attacks. "As soon as the peace activists are gone, things will calm down", an Israeli army official told Haaretz reporter Nir Hasson.
From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.
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