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Settler attack on reporters in Beita a war crime, Palestinian press syndicate says
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has condemned the attack by dozens of heavily armed Israeli settlers on journalists in the town of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, calling it a “war crime aimed at killing them”.
The syndicate said in a statement that five journalists – Ranin Sawafteh, Mohammed al-Atrash, Louay Saeed, Nasser Ishtayeh, and Nael Bouaitel – were injured in the assault.
It added that it is coordinating with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) to “urgently mobilise international institutions to provide protection for Palestinian journalists”, who it said are being systematically targeted.
The syndicate added that, alongside the IFJ, it will also pursue legal action through international judicial bodies to ensure those responsible are held accountable.
Photographer Raneen Sawafta is carried on a stretcher into Rafidia Hospital for treatment
Israeli activist describes settler attack in West Bank
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli anti-apartheid activist, says he was helping Palestinians harvest their olives earlier today when a group of dozens of masked Israeli settlers, armed with clubs, attacked them.
The settlers descended from a hill and “started hurling … huge rocks at us and we had to flee”, Pollak told Al Jazeera.
He said the assault led to more than a dozen injuries that required medical attention, including a journalist who was bludgeoned by the settlers and a 70-year-old activist who had his cheekbone and jaw broken.
But Pollak stressed that the assault was not an isolated incident carried out by “extremist” settlers but rather part of a longstanding Israeli government policy.
“We live in a situation that’s very similar to the US South during the Jim Crow period, where the sheriff and the [Klu Klux] Klan are one and the same,” he said.
“Here in the West Bank, armed Israeli civilians and the army are merely separate fingers in one clenched fist, which is the fist of Israel’s policy [to] ethnically cleanse Palestinians.”
Another settler attack reported in West Bank
Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinian homes in the village of Raba, southeast of Jenin – the latest in a string of settler assaults across the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Wafa news agency cited local sources as saying the settlers attacked homes and farmland under the protection of armed Israeli soldiers, who entered the village at the same time as the attacks.
In a separate incident, Israeli forces raided an area around a school in a nearby town, east of Jenin, assaulting several children who were playing there. No arrests or injuries were reported.
Settler violence and Israeli army raids have sharply increased across the West Bank since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. According to UN figures, Palestinians are experiencing the highest level of settler violence since 2020, with at least 126 incidents reported in 70 towns and villages since September, and more than 4,000 olive trees and saplings destroyed.
