Palestinian children inspect the car of Hamdallah Afaneh after an attack by Israeli settlers while Afaneh was harvesting olives in the West Bank village of Azmout, near the city of Nablus. Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinian farmers almost daily since the beginning of the olive harvest, particularly in the Nablus area. (Rami Swidan, Maan Images)

Nahla Mohammed says that it happens almost every weekend. Right-wing Israeli settlers from nearby Yitzhar come to vandalize houses such as hers, which are on the edge of the Palestinian village of Asira il-Qabliya.

When she hears them coming, she makes sure her children are inside, locks up, and waits with a small video camera that she was given by B'Tselem, a human rights group. She tries to capture them cutting water mains, breaking windows, or scrawling graffiti on the sides of the Arab houses.

Video cameras like hers have emerged as a new nonviolent weapon for West Bank Palestinians - who face a rising number of attacks at the hands of settlers anxious over their fate in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But the Palestinian video footage often ends up on Israeli TV, thus becoming a tool for both deterrence and justice.

"We're trying to use the cameras to reduce the level of violence as a whole. When settlers see the camera, we hope that they will behave less violently," says Sarit Michaeli, the spokeswoman for Btselem.

"We also want to use the footage to provide to the Israeli media to raise awareness of the problems and to pressure the law enforcement bodies to do their job."

Btselem has given out 150 cameras as part of its Shooting Back program that started slowly last year and is beginning to show results. Already, footage shot by Palestinians has been used in at least 20 cases involving settler violence.

In one well-publicized case in June, four masked settlers were filmed clubbing three members of a Palestinian family grazing their flock south of the Susiya settlement, near Hebron.

"All of them had their faces covered," says Ms. Michaeli. "So, therefore, those who were arrested as suspects were released."

Israeli police have 407 criminal cases against Israelis involved in public disturbances in the West Bank since the beginning of the year.

Danny Poleg, a spokesman for the Israeli police division that covers all of the West Bank, said that between January and August of this year, there was an 11 percent increase in reports of violent incidents over the same period last year.

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