http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/394950.html<snip>
"Since the renewal of the Jewish settlement in Hebron during Passover in 1968, the large Palestinian city in the southern part of the West Bank has attracted the most extremist elements among the settlers. In the winter of 1994, a few months after the signing of the Oslo accords, Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Arab residents of the city who were praying at the mosque in the Tomb of the Patriarchs. The massacre was meant to foil the agreement and prevent transfer of the city to the Palestinian Authority with the rest of the major cities of the West Bank. In the wake of the massacre, the parties agreed to the establishment of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), made up of volunteers from six countries and led by Norway. The TIPH observers are allowed to patrol on foot and by car everywhere in Hebron and to record their impressions - but they do not carry weapons and do not have the authority to intervene.
The Hebron agreement, signed in 1997 during Benjamin Netanyahu's tenure as prime minister, defines area H2 as being under the security control of the IDF. Before the intifada, there were some 35,000 Palestinian residents of the area, alongside settlers' homes. In an interview with Arnon Regular that appeared yesterday in Haaretz, the outgoing head of TIPH, Jan Kristensen, says his people have not managed to become a buffer between the Palestinian residents and the settlers who are trying to force them out of their homes. He said the settlers bully the Palestinians, trying to make them leave. According to the TIPH observer, the limits imposed by the army also create an irreversible reality, which will lead to "cleansing" the city of its Arab residents.
Kristensen says that his team has been helpless in the face of the settler bullying of the Palestinians. He says there have been hundreds of incidents, including blocking cars, rock and egg peltings, curses and spitting. A few attempts to lower the tension with the settlers failed, he said. "I ask myself all the time what we are doing here," he said, adding that the team is in the city on the basis of an agreement between the sides. He showed understanding of Israel's security needs; after all, more than 30 suicide terrorists came out of Hebron."
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"It's not the armed, warmongering settlers who need protection, but the thousands of helpless Palestinians. Politically and morally, Israel cannot allow itself to turn a blind eye and even cooperate with gangs of hooligans who claim to be acting in the name of God as they force people out of their homes and expropriate their properties."
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