"There is no justice. It's a jungle law here," Palestinian coffee shop owner Hani Abu Haikal told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Thursday, May 18.
"Settlers can kill, shoot, attack, do anything," he added, flanked by a group of Israelis visiting the occupied city.
Abu Haikal recalled last year's assault by Jewish settlers on his hilltop villa while he was entertaining a group of his Israeli and Christian friends.
The attack caused his elderly father to collapse in shock and later die.
Settlers danced around the ambulance as we carried his body to the cemetery, handing out sweets and chanting anti-Arab slurs, Abu Haikal remembers bitterly.
Settlers' attacks on Palestinians in Al-Khalil have even dazzled their fellow Jews.
"I was so shocked," said Amnon Birman, a 58-year-old Jewish lawyer and one of nine Israelis who sought to comfort the Palestinian resident.
Coexistence
Palestinians and Jews used to live together in peace and harmony before the creation of Israel in 1948.
Abu Haikal's grandfather ran a grocery shop with a Jewish partner and lit the homes of Jewish neighbors on the Shabbat, the weekly day of rest in Judaism.
It is observed, from before sundown on Friday until after nightfall on Saturday, by many Jewish people with varying degrees of involvement in Judaism.
And when violence erupted in the city in 1929, Palestinians sought to shield the Jews from death.
"I used to ask my father why did you protect them? He told me we lived with the Jews and looked after each other as humans," said Abu Haika, unable to quite understand how it could have changed in a generation.
Shocking
Walking around downtown Al-Khalil to see the homes where their descendants once lived in harmony with Palestinians, the nine Israelis were shocked to the bones.
The once bustling Palestinian market, now occupied by Jewish squatters, is a deserted mesh of barbed wire, camouflage netting, a rooftop Israeli sniper and walls defaced by Hebrew graffiti proclaiming "Death to the Arabs."
The group watched a Palestinian father slither on the sand under waist-high barbed wire in a dank, smelly alley as a short cut from his isolated home to the Palestinian-controlled sector of the occupied city.
But his pregnant wife can not get through.
Nearby, Jewish children were seen setting fire to abandoned Palestinian debris.
Even Palestinian children were not spared repeated assaults by Jewish settlers while walking to school.
"Chiefly it's stone throwing, but they are also deliberately trying to terrify them," said John Lynes, a British peace activist who walk with Palestinian children to school every day to protect them against Jewish attacks.
A cohort of Israeli intellectuals, academicians and artists recently sent a letter to Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert, demanding protection for Palestinian school children against repeated assaults by Jewish settlers, Haaretz reported on Wednesday, May 10.
Thieves
The city was spilt into two after an attack by a Jewish settler on Palestinians while praying at Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi in 1994, which left 29 worshipers killed.
Most of the 166,000 Palestinians live in H1 under Palestinian control, but at least 10,000 are still trapped in the Israeli-controlled H2, held hostage to curfews, restrictions and intimidation by 500 Jewish squatters.
"I don't know how you can let 400 or 500 people dominate the lives of tens of thousands. It's unbelievable," said Birman.
He asserted that Jewish settlers in the city were seeking to legitimize their presence in defiance to international law.
"I see them as lunatics, thieves and liars. My grandfather believed in friendship with the Arabs," he added.
Shalmith Rahav, a retired art appreciation teacher from Tel Aviv, agreed.
"We're not against settlers being here, but against what's happening here," she said as a crowd of hostile settlers, some armed, gather around.