Volume 36, Number 10 · June 15, 1989
The Settlers
By Robert I. Friedman
Several months ago, residents of the Arab village of Bidya on the West Bank assassinated their mukhtar, or headman, whom they had accused of being an Israeli collaborator. The mukhtar, Mustafa Salim Abu Bakr, was a well-known land speculator who villagers claim defrauded them out of hundreds of dunams of land by, in some cases, tricking them into signing over to him the deeds to their property. Like many mukhtars on the West Bank, Abu Bakr had been appointed by the Israeli Civil Administration to run the village and to act as a middleman between the villagers and the authorities. He was supplied with Uzi machine guns and a beeper that connected him to the nearby Jewish settlement of Ariel, which sent squads of armed settlers to Bidya whenever he called for protection. Abu Bakr passed out the weapons among a small band of followers, who used them to intimidate the villagers and to collect 'taxes' from them. The villagers twice appealed to the Israeli Civil Administration to remove Abu Bakr. In November 1986, the house of the villager who led the opposition against the mukhtar was riddled with machine-gun fire.
Feature, 9723 words
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