According to an Israeli human rights group, 14 Palestinians, including at least two children, were wounded in the occupied West Bank.
Yesh Din, who documents attacks on Palestinians and wants to end the Israeli occupation, said a large number of crossings in the West Bank were blocked by settlers on Thursday night and stones were thrown at Palestinian vehicles.
Jad Alaa Sawfta, a 5-year-old from Tubas city in the West Bank, was injured on Thursday around 22:00 local time (15:00 ET) at the Givat Asaf junction near the city of Ramallah, the Palestinian administrative base in the West Bank. . , added it. The group shared a photo of the boy who had scratches on his cheek and lower lip.
On January 17, an 11-year-old Palestinian girl also sustained injuries to her face as a result of stones thrown by Israeli settlers, according to Yesh Din.
These latest incidents come amid what rights groups say is an increase in settler violence following the death of a young settlement suspected of stoning Palestinians in a car chase with police on the West Bank on December 21st.
The settlers are angry about what they believe is the bad treatment of the Israeli police against them and about the death of the settler, Ahuvia Sandak, said Lior Amihai, executive director of Yesh Din. .
Amihai said the group had documented nearly 50 incidents of settlement violence against Palestinians since Sandak’s death, injuring 14 Palestinians. He said the group could not compare the figure with data from the past because it did not record all cases of settler violence.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Thursday condemned the attacks on the West Bank and called on the government of President Joe Biden to do the same.
An Israeli police spokesman said it was deployed at points of friction in the West Bank to prevent violence and to enforce the law. In the past month, a number of cases have been opened about violent behavior and violence against Palestinians and the security forces.
A police investigation into the incident in which the child was injured is continuing, she added.
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In a statement to NBC News, an Israeli military spokesman said his troops “do not stand by them if they witness violence. He adds that it” works continuously to maintain stability “in the region. .
The IDF has put questions about Thursday’s incident to police.
A spokesman for the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, declined to comment.
Another prominent Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, also said that there had been an increase in settler attacks on Palestinians on the West Bank recently, but that he was still compiling the number of incidents.
Both groups said the violence was a continuation of a decades-long campaign against Palestinians in the disputed territory that Israel seized from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war in 1967 and wanted Palestinians as part of a future state. . They say Israeli authorities have allowed the settlers to attack their Palestinian neighbors.
“No one is trying to stop these attacks in advance, not even while they are happening,” said Yael Stein, research director at B’Tselem. “This reality is not coincidental, but is part of Israel’s deliberate policy to privatize violence that serves its purposes: to take over Palestinian land and resources by expelling Palestinians.”
Palestinians are also regularly accused of violence against settlers, including throwing stones, bumping cars and stabbing. But Stein said that when that happens, the military will act and arrest and prosecute suspects.
“It’s not symmetrical,” she said.
The increase in violence comes amid an increase in Israeli plans for more settlements in the West Bank.
Israel on Wednesday issued tenders for more than 2,500 settlement houses in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in addition to hundreds more announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, the Israeli human rights group Peace Now said.
More than 440,000 settlers now live in the West Bank in settlements that are considered illegal by the majority of the international community, along with more than 2.7 million Palestinians, according to Peace Now.
In 2019, under the Trump administration, however, the United States reversed their decades-long position that Israeli settlements on the West Bank were illegal.
As presidential candidate, Joe Biden told The New York Times that “Israeli leaders must stop the expansion of West Bank settlements.”
Lawahez Jabari contributed.