mers
and visit Yanun to enjoy refreshments like cardamom-spiced coffee and mint tea
there. In the mid-late 1990s, Itamar began 'annexing' hills stretching out from
the settlement towards Yanun. trailer homes from Itamar began to be set up
along the ridge overlooking the village. The last, "Gvaot Olam"
(hills of the universe) was created by Avri Ran, and looks down on the village.
Though they felt surrounded, the Yanun villagers did not feel vulnerable.
Relations changed with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in October 2000,
when 13 Israeli Arabs were shot dead during the suppression of a riot
protesting the visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount. Yanun lies far from
the main areas where Palestinian militants and the IDF subsequently clashed,
and till then grievances between the two communities were less than the norm.
Over the next three years, Palestinian militants killed roughly 11 Itamar
settlers. A Californian who made aliyah to Itamar later accused Yanun of having
aided these terrorists. No member of the village has been linked to any attack
on settlers. The youths on Avri Ran's hilltop outpost argue that they have a
prerogative to respond with violence when they feel their Palestinian
neighbours are preventing them from realizing their right, as legal heirs of
God's bequest, to work the land.
Armed settlers, according to local reports began to hinder Yanun farmers
from harvesting their olive crops, intimidating the villagers and damaging the
village’s electrical generator. According to a survey reported and compiled by
Yanun councilor Abdelatif Sobih, Yanun villagers have since been subjected to
repeated assaults on their homes and farms; beatings; shootings, some resulting
in death; poisoning and shootings of their flocks; the use of fierce dogs to
impede farmer access to their lands; blocking of their access roads; pollution
of their water resource; destruction of their electric generator, constructed with
a
