Three Palestinians injured in West Bank settler attack
Three Palestinians have been injured in a settler attack near the village of Beit Imrin, northwest of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reported. The settlers assaulted them, damaged the vehicles and detained them before releasing them later, the report added.
A wave of assaults and arrests
Despite the settler attacks, it is Palestinians who have largely found themselves arrested by Israeli forces.
On Saturday night, settlers raided al-Fandaqumiya, south of Jenin, setting fire to homes and vehicles before moving to the neighbouring village of Silat al-Dhaher, where at least two more homes were torched and six residents injured. According to local Palestinian networks, Israeli forces did not intervene to stop the attackers or prevent them from moving between villages.
Palestinian activists also reported that, in Jiljiliya, northeast of Ramallah, on March 17, settlers raided the home of Yousef Muzahim, and then called the Israeli army to arrest him and his two sons, aged 12 and 14.
Similar incidents were reported in Salfit governorate and the South Hebron Hills.
Land seizures and demolitions
Amid a longstanding campaign to seize Palestinian land throughout the occupied West Bank, the past week has seen a continuation of Israeli land seizure and agricultural destruction in the territory.
Israeli bulldozers were filmed uprooting olive trees across multiple days in Nilin along the separation wall, while in Nablus governorate’s Huwara, more than 100 dunams (0.1 square kilometres) containing more than 1,500 olive trees were bulldozed. In the southern West Bank’s Masafer Yatta, settlers destroyed more than 130 olive trees in Khirbet Mughayir al-Abeed by reportedly releasing livestock into cultivated land for them to feed on.
And on March 16, Israeli authorities issued military orders to seize 268 dunams (0.268 square kilometres) “for military purposes” belonging to families in Tubas and Tammun, in the northeast West Bank, followed two days later by soldiers arriving at Tammun with an excavator to begin preparation work for a new road. The orders came days after the March 15 killing of four members of a Palestinian family, including two children, travelling by car in Tammun, by Israeli forces.
In the Jordan Valley’s Fasayel al-Wusta, Israeli forces demolished the last remaining home in the community, after other families had been forcibly displaced months earlier by settler violence – despite the Israeli High Court reportedly having approved an agreement permitting the family to stay. Another demolition by the Israeli Civil Administration was photographed taking place on Monday in Khirbet al-Marajim, southwest of Duma, in the Nablus governorate.
Roads blocked, communities isolated
Since March 17, settlers have been massing nightly at more than 10 road junctions – from Zaatara and Yitzhar to Homesh and as-Sawiya – attacking Palestinian vehicles. On Sunday, Route 60 from Sinjil to Homesh was closed entirely for the Beit Imrin settler’s funeral procession, with all Palestinian entrances shut and movement restricted to ambulances with prior coordination.
Intensifying movement restrictions put in place by authorities since the start of the Iran war, settlers additionally closed the entrances of many other Palestinian communities, according to reports from local Palestinians.
The settler road blockades had begun after settlers declared that “a red line has been crossed in the persecution of the pioneer settlement”, in response to Israeli military actions dismantling a small number of illegal outposts – grievances that spilled into stone-throwing attacks on Palestinian vehicles at nightly junction gatherings.
According to Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, since the war on Iran began on February 28, at least 14 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, including two minors – eight by the military, six by armed settlers – a rate with little recent precedent.
