Israeli authorities, settlers carried out 12,000+ attacks in 2023
4 Min Read
The head of the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission details that Israeli settlers carried out 2,410 of the attacks.
-
Israeli soldiers with settlers from the "Einav" settlement trying to storm the town of Deir Sharaf in Nablus, West Bank, on November 2, 2023. (AFP)
Israeli authorities and illegal settlers engaged in over 12,000 attacks in the last year, Anadolu Agency reported.
Head of the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, Moayad Shaaban, told reporters in Ramallah that “the occupation authorities and their settlers carried out 12,161 attacks, including 5,308 after October 7."
The current Israeli government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, has adopted a fierce, violent expansionist policy in the occupied West Bank. Arming settlers with assault rifles has been a trademark of the occupation's Police Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Additionally, the occupation has protected extremists who have desecrated religious sanctities in al-Quds. All previously mentioned violations, among others, motivated the Palestinian Resistance in the Gaza Strip to launch Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which exposed the occupation's fragility.
Shaaban detailed that Israeli settlers were responsible for 2,410 of the attacks, adding that 25 Bedouin villages were uprooted in the West Bank and the eastern part of Al-Quds this year, with 22 of them following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The villages include 266 households and a total population of 1,517 Palestinians.
According to the official, 21,731 trees were chopped down and damaged during the last year, including 18,964 olive trees.
He further reported that Israeli officials seized about 50,000 dunams of land under different pretexts.
2023; deadliest year for Palestinian children
UNICEF deemed 2023 the deadliest year on record for youths in the occupied West Bank, attributing the surge to heightened Israeli police and military interventions, aggravated by the ongoing situation in Gaza.
In a statement released last month, UNICEF highlighted a surge in "conflict-related violence" in the occupied West Bank this year, revealing that 83 children were killed in the past 12 weeks, surpassing the total for the entire year of 2022 by more than double.
“Children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been experiencing grinding violence for many years, yet the intensity of that violence has dramatically increased" since October 7, the agency added.
Israeli settler killed in shooting operation outside Ramallah
An Israeli settler was killed in a shooting operation in the Oyoun al-Haramiyah area to the north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on Sunday.
Israeli media outlets said that the settler was shot and killed while he was driving his car on the road linking the city of Ramallah to Nablus. The road linking the two Palestinian cities cuts between multiple illegal Israeli settlements that were built on usurped properties.
شاهد | سيارة المستوطن الذي قتل بإطلاق نار على سيارته بين رام الله ونابلس عند ما يعرف بمفترق عيون الحرامية pic.twitter.com/gUPXXxoipb
— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) January 7, 2024
The operation comes amid continued Israeli violations against Palestinians in the West Bank, paired with a brutal genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Israeli settlers and authorities have carried on expansionist policies in the West Bank, where at least nine new colonial outposts were erected since October 7, while Israeli occupation forces carry out near-daily raids on town and refugee camps.
These raids have mainly targeted the governates of Tulkarm and Jenin, with the latest incursion into Jenin ending on a bitter note for occupation forces, who were ambushed by Resistance fighters.
In Jenin alone, 80 Palestinians have been martyred by the occupation's drone strikes or direct gunfire.
Moreover, settlers have been fencing off open areas in Area C, which falls under the direct jurisdiction of the Israeli occupation government, according to the Oslo agreement.
It is worth noting that Area C comprises the largest territory in the West Bank and contains grazing and agricultural lands, which have been the focus of settlers who seek to push Palestinians from their land, under the protection of Israeli occupation forces.
