Can you blame them? The Israeli government is doing nothing to stop Jewish settlers encroaching on the Palestinians. Are the Palestinians supposed to watch on silently while Jewish settlers steal what little land they have left?.
Talk about zealotry and greed. Some Israelis are announcing that the West Bank is the centre of Israel and we're taught to believe that only Muslims are extremists.
THEIR portable home is shining white, like a new refrigerator lying on its side. Despite all the recent talk of a freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank, Michal Chayat and her husband Matanya have moved into Kida in the past two weeks. Already they are expanding. Matanya has added a pine deck.
Theirs is one of 35 portable homes, plain white boxes sitting on concrete pylons, divided by strips of freshly laid asphalt, looking east towards the Jordan Valley. The landscape around Kida, a tiny illegal outpost in the occupied West Bank, is rocky and fertile, with untamed hills of heather and thistle divided by neat vineyards.
In this area, which religious Jews refer to by its ancient name of Samaria, sage grows wild and residents say that you can smell the Torah.
''When Israelis ask me where I live I tell them I live in the centre of Israel,'' says Tzofia Dorot, 30, the daughter of a Chicago-born rabbi.Dorot is a settler, one of the supposedly rogue Israeli extremists whom the US Government and world opinion have defined as a big obstacle to peace in the Middle East. But there are settlers and settlers.
''We are always under threat here,'' Haim says. Adamantly opposed to giving up territory that is at the heart of Jewish history, Haim Ya'acobi denies any Palestinian right to the land of the West Bank.To Haim the idea of a pre-existing Palestinian nation is not supported by history. ''They [the Palestinians in the West Bank] belong in Jordan,'' he says.
About 30 kilometres north of Kida a cluster of Jewish settlements has grown to form a ring around the Palestinian city of Nablus. These settlers are known for their fanaticism, and for launching repeated attacks on nearby Palestinian villagers and their crops. Built into the side of Mount Gerizim is an illegal outpost known as Brakha B, an offshoot of Brakha, the parent settlement that sits at the top of the mountain.
Untidy, almost squalid, Brakha B emits an aggressive intensity. The people who live here are openly hostile. Journalists are chased away, more often than not, their cars pelted with rocks.
At 32, he has five children, and his wife Michaela is pregnant with their sixth. Such is his relaxed appearance that Ben Shakhar could be mistaken for a hippie were it not for his belligerent views.
His is a triangular culture that admits no outsiders. ''It is between me, God, and the land of Israel. There is nothing else,'' Shakhar says. When it comes to the issue of the state of Israel dismantling outposts such as Brakha B to make way for a Palestinian state, Shakhar talks about the price that will be paid.
For every settler's home that is demolished, Shakhar says, the settlers will respond by randomly attacking Palestinians and destroying their property. He was involved in one such revenge attack last week, when he and groups of settlers ''beat up some Arabs'' at the nearby Itamar junction.Asked about settler attacks on nearby Palestinian villagers, Shakhar shrugs his shoulders.
''So what? I don't want peace. We are fighting a war.''http://www.smh.com.au/world/unveiled-life-at-the-heart-of-conflict-20090828-f2j5...