As the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has stretched into its 11th month, Israel has increased its military activity against what it terms suspected terrorism in the occupied West Bank, and violent settler attacks have surged at the same time.
Far-right ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s government — particularly Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, who are both West Bank settlers — have espoused divisive rhetoric and advanced policies to expand Israel’s hold on the territory.
The West Bank is home to about 2.7 million Palestinians and more than 500,000 settlers. Israel seized control of the territory from Jordan in 1967 during a war with three Arab states, and Israelis have since settled there with both tacit and explicit government approval. The international community largely considers settlements illegal, and many outposts also violate Israeli laws.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which tracks violent incidents in the West Bank, said in its latest update on Wednesday that Israeli settlers had carried out 25 attacks against Palestinians in the previous week. Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that set off the war in Gaza, the agency has recorded around 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property.
“There has been an uptick in vigilante attacks by a minority of settlers,” David Makovsky, director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel relations at the Washington Institute, said in an interview. “The West Bank is a tinderbox.”
Few attacks, however, have generated the kind of immediate reprobation from Israeli officials that followed the storming of Jit.
How many rockets on a city per year still count as “peacefully”?
Source that the Palestinian victims of Israeli settler violence are the same ones using violent resistance against the occupation?
well, the palestinian police didn’t arrest any rocket shooters, nor did the palestonian people lynch them or bring them to justice for 80 years. so it’s safe to assume every palestinian adult who still lives there is complicit.
to be clear: i’m not pro-israel and don’t agree with israely methods. also i don’t like what the israely settlers are doing.
i just also don’t agree with you painting it black and white. nobody is peaceful in the whole israel-palestine region, except a few children. it’s a gigantic decades long shitshow and everyone has blood on their hands.