The Israeli Settlers Attacking Their Palestinian Neighbors

One day when I visited Ma’amar, he piled up a dozen cameras on his desk—old mini-D.V. camcorders, point-and-shoot 35-mm.s—some broken by settlers. It was a collection built up during nearly twenty years of documenting settler violence and encroachment onto Palestinian land. “My cameras are my weapons,” he said. “I’m probably the person in Qaryut who has filed the most complaints to the police, to the Supreme Court.” There had been some moments of success. He’d helped a man get back half of the hundred and seventy acres that settlers had seized from him. Mostly, though, his cases went nowhere. “The Israeli legal system doesn’t work for the benefit of Palestinians,” he said.