Caught in the middle of Israeli settler frenzy

Ma'an – "It was not at all rational, the way it's written in the news; it was chaos," a member of Ma'an's TV crew said after being caught up in the middle of Tuesday's settler violence near Nablus.

"With the settlers, you just don't know what they're going to do, who they'll target," she said.

A Ma'an van was en route to Nablus to film an episode of a quiz show and had just passed a checkpoint when those inside were introduced firsthand to the unpredictable violence in the northern West Bank.

Muhammad Fawzi, one of Ma’an’s senior TV executives, was in the van and immediately called in the story to headquarters in Bethlehem. Even after the news was in and the story published, however, he and his crew were trapped at the closed Huwwara checkpoint watching the story as it continued to unfold.

Amongst the large number of Israeli rioters, Fawzi explained, three stood out. "They made me nervous," he said, describing them as extremist settlers dressed as religious Jews.

"They stood beside their olive-green Chevrolet. It had a yellow license-plate (52-567-28) and stickers with racist anti-Arab slogans like 'death to the Arabs.' The stickers practically covered the windshield," he said.

"They just stood and watched as dozens of others threw flaming rags and bottles at Palestinian fields."

As the van drove on, Fawzi said, "Fires erupted over an entire hill, burning trees which Palestinian farmers spent their entire lives tending. Firefighters seemed unable to put out the blaze due to their humble equipment, but when they put one out there were a dozen others started by the settlers who continued to throw the lit rags."

He continued: "Firefighters were struggling to put out the blaze they set in the olive groves. The crews were trying their best, but you could see their equipment wasn't efficient; they struggled as the fire raged."

In photos: Settlers riot near Nablus

Israel's military, which is itself often the target of setter violence in the north, condemned Tuesday's riots and vowed to maintain order. But the army also says much of it is hard to predict.

Another Ma'an crew member, a European national who has covered the West Bank for a number of years for MaanImages, said that what struck her about the incident was the unpredictability.

"The soldiers just stood there watching the settlers destroy things," she explained. "At one point as we tried to drive through the riots, the yellow-plated car came speeding toward us."

Fawzi said the car was driven by a settler who followed the crew. "They were honking the horn and leaning out the window screaming filthy curses at us. Then when we moved to the side of the road they continued and almost collided with several other Palestinian cars."

The most consistent comments from the Ma'an crew, as they returned from what they assumed would be an ordinary day filming another round of their show, were about the attitude of those they observed.

"It was awful seeing the young people - both settler and soldier - how they acted. It was as if these young extremists were trained to bare a grudge against Palestinians," Fawzi said.

Even as employees of the largest news network in Palestine, those in the van said the violence was unnerving. They were taken aback by the depth of violence they witnessed, which they said media reports about the incident were unable to convey.

Conventional reporting indeed prioritizes fact over emotion.

"Residents of an illegal Israeli settlement rioted Monday in the northern West Bank, protesting the demolition of structures built in an adjoining outpost," Ma'an's Nablus correspondent, Mahmoud Barham, reported a day earlier.