Waiting For Justice

May Itmeizi is still waiting for justice. The 20-year-old Palestinian woman watched three of her relatives die two years ago in a drive-by shooting attack near the West Bank town of Hebron. She says Jewish settlers were responsible for the crimes. Though members of the family filed successive police reports and were ready to hand over the bodies of the dead--including a 4-month-old boy--for autopsies, police turned up nothing for months. Even the news last week that a Jerusalem court sentenced three Jewish settlers to long prison terms for a different attack on Palestinians failed to raise hopes in the Itmeizi home. "I would like to see the criminals punished. But I have my doubts," Itmeizi says.

She might be in for a surprise. Israeli police now believe that a handful of settlers arrested in recent months might have been involved in violence that has killed at least seven Palestinians in the West Bank in the past three years, including the Itmeizis. Though authorities admit key pieces of the puzzle are still missing, the investigation already marks the widest net cast over settlers since fighting erupted in the West Bank and Gaza in September 2000. One of the suspects has led police to a stockpile of arms hidden in caves in the West Bank, including rifles, grenades and even rocket launchers. West Bank police commander Shahar Ayalon says that while the shooters have not been identified yet, ballistic tests have linked some of the rifles to the attacks on Palestinians. "I was shocked to see so many guns and so much ammunition," Ayalon said, poring over photographs of the cache in his Jerusalem office last week. Even human-rights groups, like B'Tselem, which often accuse police of being soft on settlers, say the investigation is serious.

Ayalon calls the group a "retribution cell" because some of the settlers have themselves been victims of Palestinian violence--shootings and bombings like the Haifa restaurant attack last Saturday that killed 19 Israelis. One of the settlers, Yitzhak Pas, was indicted last month for possessing explosives. A resident of the settler community in Hebron, Pas watched his 10-month-old daughter die in her stroller after being shot by a Palestinian sniper two years ago. He was also wounded in the attack. "He's not involved in all this," Pas's wife, Oriya, says in her modest Hebron home. "He wouldn't have done anything that would put him in prison for a long time and cause me to be alone." Oriya Pas complains that investigators dealt harshly with her husband, preventing him from sleeping during the first days of the interrogation and keeping him handcuffed to a chair.

Human-rights groups say that kind of grilling is routine in the interrogation of Palestinians but rarely employed with Israelis. "Police tend to deal one way with settlers and another way with [West Bank] Palestinians," says attorney Yael Stein, who has served for 10 years as research director at B'Tselem. Stein says police routinely look the other away when Israelis attack Palestinians, whereas each case of violence against settlers is aggressively investigated. Palestinian villages are placed under curfew when attacks take place and the homes of militants are demolished, she said--measures authorities would never think of imposing on settlers. And though 145 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians in the West Bank and Gaza in the past 15 years, Stein adds, the investigations have produced just 30 indictments and 23 convictions.

Settler leaders insist the opposite is true--that police are under orders to harass them. David Wilder, the spokesman for Jewish settlers in Hebron, says security officials tap their phones and plant agents in their communities to uncover plots against Palestinians. He says police are often violent with settlers in Hebron. "They simply hound us... If I didn't live here and see it myself, I wouldn't believe it." Police, of course, deny badgering the settlers but say the assassination of an Israeli prime minister eight years ago by a right-wing Jew is a constant reminder that extremists must be monitored.

For May Itmeizi only one thing matters: that judges convict the people who killed her relatives, and sentence them to long prison terms. Itmeizi was sitting in the back seat of the family car in June of 2001, with her 4-month-old nephew on her lap, when a round of bullets pierced the vehicle. One of the bullets struck her ankle and she fainted. Another one hit her nephew in the head, killing him instantly. The assailants killed two other family members in the car before speeding off. "Israel has never punished the criminals who are involved in crimes against the Palestinian people," Itmeizi said last week. Some Israeli officials, at least, hope to prove her wrong.