In the West Bank on Saturday and Sunday, Israeli paramilitary colonizers attacked Palestinian civilians and their property, burning Palestinian homes and vehicles. Armed paramilitary Israeli colonizers also invaded the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.
In Saturday’s attack, a group of armed Israeli paramilitary colonizers burned Palestinian homes and vehicles in the village of Umm Safa, north of Ramallah, under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces, and fired live bullets at Palestinian homes and facilities.
This marks the third straight day of Israeli paramilitary attacks on Palestinian town and villages, which included burning Palestinian homes and vehicles in over a dozen villages, burning the Muslim holy book ‘The Quran’ in an attempt to desecrate the religion practiced by most Palestinians, and attacking and brutalizing Palestinian civilians.
On Sunday, Israeli colonial settlers wrote racist slogans on the walls of greenhouses in the vicinity of the Shufa military checkpoint, southeast of Tulkarem.
Farmer Tahsin Hamed told a correspondent with the Palestinian Wafa news agency that a group of armed paramilitary settlers infiltrated the lands surrounding the checkpoint, and wrote racist slogans calling for the killing of Arabs, on greenhouses belonging to farmers Ahmed and Mueen Muhammad Hamed from Izbat Shufa .
He added that the settlers stole two donkeys belonging to him and his brother Jamal.
It is noteworthy that this is not the first time that armed Israeli settler gangs have encroached on the lands and property of farmers in the village and estate of Shufa, the most recent of which was last April when they destroyed agricultural buildings, saplings and trees on the land of farmer Hamid, while attacking citizens and their vehicles during their almost daily gathering in the vicinity Shufa military checkpoint.
Also Sunday, Israeli paramilitary settlers stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, under the strict protection of the Israeli occupation police.
The Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem reported that dozens of armed Israeli paramilitary settlers stormed Al-Aqsa from the Mughrabi Gate, carried out provocative tours, and performed Talmudic rituals in its courtyards and near its gates.
In recent months, the Al-Aqsa Mosque has been subjected to Israeli settler incursions every day, except for Friday and Saturday, at two shifts, morning and evening, in an attempt to impose a temporal and spatial division of the space. This is an affront to Muslims around the world, as the mosque is sacred to all of the world’s one billion Muslims, as it is believed to be built on the place where Mohammed ascended into heaven.
The US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, expressed his “deep concern about the recent extremist settler attacks against Palestinian civilians and the destruction of their property in the West Bank.”
In a phone call with his Israeli counterpart, Tzachi Hanegbi, Sullivan stressed the importance of holding those responsible for these acts of violence accountable, calling for additional steps to be taken to restore calm and reduce tensions.
Sullivan also called for Israel to refrain from unilateral measures, including settlement expansion, that further inflame tensions, expressing the United States’ hope that the two parties – Israeli and Palestinian – would build on the commitments made during the talks in Aqaba, Jordan, and in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt after two recent Israeli invasions of Gaza and the West Bank that resulted in dozens of Palestinian civilian casualties, and massive destruction of Palestinian property and infrastructure.
