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TechnoratiBut they have a worsening image problem in Israel. Their critics have been galvanized by B'Tselem, the rights group, and Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli army veterans who take Israelis on tours of Hebron's flash points.
B'Tselem hands out video cameras to Palestinians, then makes the footage public. In one video that caused a stir in Israel, a Jewish woman tells a Palestinian woman to stay behind a gate.
"Sit here, in the cage," the settler taunts.
When the Palestinian refuses, she hisses: "You're a whore, and your daughters, too."
Another video shows children as young as 4 throwing debris at Palestinians while a black-bearded man in a skullcap looks on.
Olives have become a factor in the conflict, as settlers try to chase Palestinian farmers away from land near settlements. In one recent incident, they punched a 53-year-old British woman who was trying to shield farmers from attack.
Increasingly, Israelis are asking why their government doesn't intervene. The reason, says Gershom Gorenberg, author of a history of the settlers, is that "Hebron has a place in ancient Jewish history and modern Zionist history that has an emotional resonance that works against making a practical decision about it."
Under accords signed in the 1990s, Abbas' government controls 80 percent of Hebron and Israel the other 20 percent. Some 30,000 Palestinians live in the Israeli-run area, and they complain that it has become a refuge for drug gangs and common criminals, immune from both their own law and from Israeli troops whose orders are to protect Jewish settlers, not stop Palestinian crime.
Sharabati, the rights worker, described a scene of young Palestinians smoking hashish directly below an Israeli army watchtower, the smoke wafting up through the windows to the booth where the soldiers sat.
Israeli surveillance is everywhere. Abdel Kareem Hadad, a Palestinian living in the Israeli-controlled area, has an army camera bolted to his house. It began moving as he sat on his porch one recent morning, at one point cueing directly at him as he spoke.
"This is for their security, not our security," Hadad said.
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