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Recent revelations of army brutality toward Palestinians may have shocked some Israelis but residents of this West Bank town say such abuse is part of the daily pattern of life. The army has launched an official investigation into the testimony given by soldiers in an ongoing exhibition in Tel Aviv that they regularly dished out violence to residents in Hebron during a recent tour of duty. "The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) educates its soldiers to act according to high moral standards and will continue to investigate and take serious measures in exceptional incidents," said a statement. But the experience of the Abu Omar family seems to indicate that random harassment and brutality are often par for the course. Thirty-five family members live in a four-storey apartment block, situated some 150 meters (yards) from the Beit Hadassa checkpoint in the southern West Bank town. Nearly all have a tale of how they suffered at the hands of Israeli troops in recent months. "I was visiting my brother on Saturday when five soldiers burst into the house," said 45-year-old Bushra Abu Omar. "They gathered everyone present into a single room and then began pulling apart everything in the house, rifling through all the cupboards and the furniture." The soldiers had beaten one of her brothers, Samih, and one of her nephews, Fadi. "They threatened me with a knife to prevent me from crying out," she added. Her brother Nader said that the same group of soldiers had forcibly entered his home after midnight on around a dozen occasions. "They woke my children by prodding them with rifle butts. The little ones were so scared that they wet themselves in their pyjamas." Nader also accused the soldiers of smashing a camcorder and stealing his daughter's money and around 250 dollars from his trouser pocket in one of the rooms which they searched. In April, the same soldiers had raided one of the apartments at four in the morning, said 14-year-old Doua'a Abu Omar. "They herded us in a room and then just made themselves comfortable in the living room. They sat on the sofas and were laughing and joking until the morning." Nader Abu Omar said that the soldiers "are doing all this to humiliate us." Some 1,200 soldiers guard some 600 Jewish settlers living in an enclave in the heart of Hebron, which is home to 120,000 Palestinians and has seen some of the fiercest fighting of the near four-year-old intifada. The opening of the "Breaking the Silence" exhibition, put together by the soldiers who served in Hebron, has led to heated debate within Israeli society about the corrupting impact of the occupation. It also comes amid charges being filed against border policemen for allegedly beating Palestinian youths who had been detained in Jerusalem and then forcing them to eat dirt. An Israeli military spokesman said the army was aware of the complaint and would make a fuller response at a later stage. All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Quick Links
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