Israeli paramilitary colonizers attacked Palestinian towns and villages throughout the West Bank Saturday – part of a trend of increasing colonizer violence against the indigenous Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
The pace of settler attacks in the West Bank is escalating, under the protection and support of the Israeli occupation army. They are waging acts of violence and assaulting citizens, homes, and property, and are establishing settlement outposts on stolen Palestinian land across the West Bank, in an attempt to further displace the already disenfranchised indigenous Palestinian population.
The Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission documented 415 attacks by settlers against citizens and their property during the month of May, ranging from armed attacks to vandalism, land leveling, and the uprooting of trees.
Central West Bank:
Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian farmers’ lands in Bab al-Wad area, east of Yabrud town, on Saturday.
Local sources reported that Israeli settlers infiltrated the Bab al-Wad area of the town and set fire to weeds and olive-tree-grown lands in the Bab al-Wad area of Yabroud. They caused a fire to break out in areas of cultivated land and obstructed citizens’ access to the area to extinguish the fire.
On Saturday evening, Israeli settlers, under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces, stormed the Al-Auja waterfall complex, north of Jericho city.
Hassan Malihat, general supervisor of the Al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights, told WAFA that settlers stormed the community and began grazing their livestock among the residents’ homes .
He explained that this attack comes within the context of a systematic policy by the occupation forces and settlers targeting Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley .
In this context, settlers chased a vehicle carrying fodder this evening in the Arab al-Malihat community, northwest of Jericho, and threatened its owner .
Malehat said that the settlers pursued the vehicle as it entered the community, obstructed its path, attempted to prevent it from continuing, and threatened the driver.
He added that this behavior is part of a series of provocative practices carried out by the settlers against the residents of the Bedouin communities, in an attempt to impose a new reality on the ground .
Also in the central West Bank, Israeli settler attacks forced a number of families to leave Khirbet Samra in the Jordan Valley.
Palestinian families began dismantling their homes on Saturday and preparing to leave the northern Jordan Valley due to the increasing attacks by settlers.
Head of the Al-Maleh Village Council, Mahdi Daraghmeh, reported that due to threats from settlers and their increasing attacks against citizens, six families have begun dismantling their homes in Khirbet Samra and moving to the Atouf area near Tubas, in search of safety .
Draghmeh added that over the past two years, settler attacks have forced dozens of families to leave three Palestinian communities in the northern Jordan Valley: Khallet Khader, Wadi al-Faw, and Umm al-Jimal, warning against emptying the Samra community in al-Kalma for the benefit of Israeli colonial settlers who are trying to take over the land for their own benefit.
Northern West Bank:
Israeli colonial settlers, under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces, attacked on Saturday evening the homes of citizens in the village of Tal, southwest of Nablus.
Local sources reported that colonial Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian citizens’ homes in the Kafr Rur area, and that residents confronted them, leading to clashes during which occupation forces fired live ammunition and tear gas canisters. No injuries were reported.
Southern West Bank:
Israeli settlers, under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces, set up tents on Saturday on a plot of land in the Aqabat al-Sabarneh area in Beit Ummar town, north of Hebron.
Media activist in Beit Ummar, Muhammad Awad, told Wafa that armed settlers from the “Karmei Tzur” settlement, built on stolen Palestinian lands south of Beit Ummar, set up tents on a 28-dunam plot of land owned by Sami Abdul Hamid Bahar, planted with almond and grape trees.
Awad explained that there are two water wells on the land used for irrigating crops, noting that the settlers had blocked one of them with stones and prevented the landowner from accessing it.
In another context, anti-settlement activist south of Hebron, Osama Makhamreh, told WAFA news agency that the Israeli occupation forces seized a truck from the village of Khallet al-Dabaa in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron, owned by a citizen from the town of Idhna. He pointed out that the Israeli occupation forces seized three vehicles during the past days and weeks on their way to Khallet al-Dabaa under the pretext that the area is a military zone and a firing zone .
Also Saturday, Egypt condemned the repeated attacks perpetrated by settlers against citizens in a number of cities and villages in the occupied West Bank, including the recent murder and injury of a number of Palestinians in the village of Kafr Malik.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that these systematic attacks against the Palestinian people constitute a flagrant violation of international law and the four Geneva Conventions and undermine all efforts to achieve security, peace, and stability.
The statement called on the international community to take action to put an end to these blatant violations and to assume responsibility for confronting the ongoing injustice suffered by the Palestinian people under occupation, and called for effective accountability and action to protect the Palestinian people from settler crimes.
Egypt affirmed its full support for the Palestinian people in achieving their legitimate aspirations to establish their independent state on the June 4, 1967 ‘Green Line’, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
