A group of Israeli settlers kills a Palestinian in the West Bank
According to Palestinian authorities and a report by Wafa news agency, a group of Israeli settlers attacked two Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Saturday evening, killing one man. The Palestinian emergency service has claimed that a 38-year-old man was shot in the chest and died in the northern West Bank town of Qarawat Bani Hassan during clashes between residents and settlers and Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli army has assured that soldiers arrived at the scene and used explosives and live fire to end the confrontation between residents and settlers. The Israel Defense Forces added that one Israeli and four Palestinians were injured.
In another incident, Wajih Al-Qat, the head of the local council of Madama village near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, reported that a group of about 15 settlers burned a car and smashed the windows of a house with stones. The Israeli army did not provide any information about this incident.
These two attacks are the latest in a series of similar incidents involving settlers that have drawn condemnation from world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, whose administration will ban visas for extremist settlers.
The West Bank has seen increasing violence in recent months as Jewish settlements continued to expand and U.S.-backed peace efforts stalled for nearly a decade.
In fact, the area is experiencing the greatest spiral of violence since the Second Intifada (2000-2005) and in 2023 at least 460 Palestinians have already died, most of them militiamen in armed clashes with Israeli troops and attackers, but also civilians, including a hundred teenagers. The situation worsened in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which broke out on October 7th. Since then, more than 250 Palestinians in the West Bank (including more than 60 minors) have died in violence, nine of them from settler attacks, including a child.
In parallel, there was a proliferation of new Palestinian armed groups in the area, leaving 40 dead, most of them Israeli settlers, five of them minors and seven in uniform.
Israel took control of the West Bank in 1967 and has maintained a regime of military occupation and colonization of the area since then. (agencies)