450 settlers attack Palestinians in two years: Israeli NGO Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israeli forces do not intervene in most cases to stop the attacks, and often actively unite, according to the rights group B’Tselem.

An Israeli rights group has said it has documented 451 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians since early 2020, and Israeli forces have failed to intervene in most cases to stop the attacks.

In a report released on Sunday, B’Tselem said that 66% of the Palestinian settlements occupied by the occupied West Bank had been displaced by Israeli forces.

In 170 of the cases where the army arrived, troops chose not to intervene to protect the Palestinians or actively joined the attack.

In 13 cases, Israeli forces took measures to “prevent the violence of the settlers,” according to B’Tselem.

“Attacks by Palestinian settlers are a strategy used by the Israeli apartheid regime, which seeks to advance and end the unjust use of more and more Palestinian land,” the rights group said in its report. “When violence occurs with the permission and assistance of the Israeli authorities and under its protection, it is state violence. The settlers are not challenging the statue; they are making their offer. ‘

Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, rejects claims that the treatment of Palestinians is apartheid.

Israeli security forces did not immediately comment on B’Tselem’s findings.

In recent months, violence against Palestinians by West Bank settlers has risen sharply, including against farmers harvesting olive trees.

“It is clear that attacks are on the rise,” said Ghassan Daghlas, who controls violence by settlers in the northern West Bank. say Al Jazeera last month described the violence as “planned and unintended”.

Last week, a group of settlers vandalized many cars in a village near Ramallah, and in September, dozens of settlers attacked a Bedouin village in the southern West Bank, leaving several injured, including a Palestinian child.

Dror Sadot B’Tselem’s spokesman said the group had not contacted security forces to comment on the report, “because we understood that they were not doing anything in the face of our accusations.”

The group highlighted five examples in different parts of the West Bank where violent settlers landed more than 2,800 hectares (6,919 acres).

He cited the case of the Ma’on farm, which was illegally raised in the southern West Bank but now controls about 264 hectares (652 acres), including roads and pastures used by Palestinian residents in the area.

Pastor Jummah Ribii, a 48-year-old Palestinian community member of Al-Tuwani, told B’Tselem that the settler attacks were taking him away from the farm that kept his family afloat.

In 2018 he said the settlers attacked him hard. “They broke my leg, and I had to spend two weeks in the hospital and continue treatment at home,” B’Tselem said.

“I had to sell most of our sheep to pay for the cost of the treatment.”

Farmer Zuhdi Hassan say Al Jazeera had problems this season, mainly due to settler attacks, movement restrictions and poor rainfall.

“Normally, I produce about 20 large plastic containers of olive oil, but this year I will only produce about six to seven containers,” the 57-year-old said. “I think next year’s harvest will also be poor because the settlers and our trees are constantly being destroyed.”

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have fled to locations in the West Bank that are considered illegal under international law.

Some settler posts, including the Ma’on farm, are illegal under Israeli law. However, the government has been slow or willing to evacuate them.