Latest news with #settlerviolence
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- South China Morning Post
Israeli settlers in ‘terror attack' on West Bank Christian village: Palestinian Authority
Israeli settlers attacked the Christian Palestinian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank, torching cars and spray-painting threatening graffiti, the Palestinian Authority said on Monday. 'Israeli colonial settlers launched a terror attack tonight on the Christian Palestinian village of Taybeh (Ramallah), setting fire to Palestinian vehicles and spray-painting racist threats in Hebrew on homes and property,' the Ramallah-based authority wrote on X. A Taybeh resident, speaking anonymously for safety reasons, said the attack occurred at about 2am local time, with at least two vehicles burned. They said one vehicle belonged to a journalist, while noting the damage appeared to target Palestinian property broadly. A photo shared by a Palestinian government agency on X showed graffiti on a Taybeh wall that read: 'Al-Mughayyir, you will regret', referring to a nearby village that was also attacked by settlers earlier this year. The Palestinian Authority's foreign ministry condemned the attack, calling it 'settler terrorism'.
Al Jazeera
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Life in occupied West Bank 'miserable' as settler violence rises
Issa Amro on life in the occupied West Bank becoming increasingly miserable for Palestinians. Issa Amro, a human rights activist, describes life in the occupied West Bank – the increased Israeli restrictions on movement and settler violence making life increasingly miserable for Palestinians there.
Al Jazeera
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Palestinians prepare to lose West Bank homes as Israel pushes for expulsion
Israeli soldiers bound Mohamed Yousef's hands behind his back as they dragged him to a military camp near the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian villages in Hebron governorate, in late June. With him were his mother, his wife and two sisters, arrested on their land for confronting armed Israeli settlers. Settlers often graze their animals on Palestinian land to assert control, signal unrestricted access and lay the groundwork for establishing illegal outposts, cutting Palestinians off from their farms and livestock. Yousef knew this, so he went out to defend his farm when he saw the armed settlers. But as is often the case, it was Mohamed, a Palestinian, who was punished. At the military camp, he was left with his family in the scorching sun for hours. While Mohamed and his family were released the next day, they fear they will not have the means to defend themselves for much longer. 'The police, the [Israeli] army and settlers often attack us all at once. What are we supposed to do?' Yousef said. The Israeli military did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment on the incident. Things might be about to get worse for Yousef and his family, who, along with about 1,200 other Palestinians, could soon be expelled from their lands. On June 17, during the zenith of Israel's war on Iran, the Israeli government submitted a letter, a copy of which has been seen by Al Jazeera, to the Israeli High Court of Justice that included a request by the army to demolish at least 12 villages in Masafer Yatta and expel the inhabitants. The Israeli army argued that it has to demolish the villages to convert the area into a military 'firing' or training zone, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups. However, a 2015 study by Kerem Novat, an Israeli civil society organisation, found that such justifications are a ruse to seize Palestinian land. From the time Israel occupied swaths of the West Bank in the 1967 war, it has converted about one-third of the West Bank into a 'closed military zone', according to the study. And yet, military drills have never been carried out in 80 percent of these zones after Palestinians were dispossessed of their homes. The study concluded that the military confiscates Palestinian land as a strategy to 'reduce the Palestinian population's ability to use the land and to transfer as much of it as possible to Israeli settlers'. Yousef fears his village could suffer a similar fate following the state's petition to the High Court. 'I have no idea what's going to happen to us,' Mohamed told Al Jazeera. 'Even if we are forced to leave, then where are we supposed to go? Where will we live?' Many fear the Israeli High Court will side with the army and evict all Palestinians from 'Firing Zone 918', a battle that has been ongoing for decades. Israeli courts have played a central role in rubber-stamping Israel's policies in the occupied West Bank, described as apartheid by many, by approving the demolition of entire Palestinian communities, according to Amnesty International. The communities currently at risk were first handed an eviction notice and expelled in 1999, and told that their villages had been declared a military training zone, which the army dubbed 'Firing Zone 918'. The army claimed that the herding communities living in this 'zone' were not 'permanent residents', despite the communities saying they lived there long before the state of Israel was formed by ethnically cleansing Palestinians in 1948, an event known as the Nakba. With little recourse other than navigating an unfriendly Israeli legal system to resist their dispossession, the communities and human rights lawyers representing them initiated a legal battle to stop the evictions in Israeli district courts and the High Court. In 2000, a judge ordered the army to allow the communities to return to their villages until a final ruling was issued. Human rights lawyers have since filed countless petitions and appeals to delay and hinder the army's attempt to expel the villagers. 'The [Israelis]…have been trying to expel us for decades,' said 63-year-old Nidal Younis, the head of the Masafer Yatta Council. Then, in May 2022, the High Court ordered the expulsion of eight Masafer Yatta villages. The court ruled that the inhabitants were not 'permanent residents', ignoring evidence that the defence provided. 'We brought [the court] artefacts, photo analyses and ancient tools, used by the families for decades, that were representative of permanent residence,' said Netta Amar-Shiff, one of the lawyers representing the villagers. 'But the court dismissed all the evidence we brought as irrelevant.' Amar-Shiff and her colleagues filed another case in early 2023 to argue that military drills must, at the very least, not result in the demolition of Palestinian villages or the expulsion of inhabitants in the area. The legal battle, and others, is now being upended by the Israeli army and government's request to evict and demolish all the villages in the desired military zone, said Amar-Shiff. In an attempt to fast-track that request, the Civil Planning Bureau, an Israeli military body responsible for building permits, issued a decree on June 18 to reject all pending Palestinian building requests in 'Firing Zone 918'. The United Nations and Israeli human rights groups have been notified of the new decree, although it has not been published on any government website. Across Israel and the occupied West Bank, Palestinians and Israelis need to obtain building permits from Israeli authorities to build and live in any structure. According to the Israeli human rights group Bimkom, Palestinians in Area C, the largest of three zones in the occupied West Bank that were created out of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, are practically always denied permits, while permits for Israeli settlers are almost always approved. Palestinians in Masafer Yatta still submitted many building requests, hoping the administrative process would delay the demolition of their homes. However, the Central Planning Bureau's recent decree, issued to align with the army's prior announcement, supersedes all these pending requests and paves the way for an outright rejection of all of them, facilitating more ethnic cleansing, according to activists, lawyers and human rights groups. Once the decree is published, lawyers representing Palestinians from 'Firing Zone 918' will have to go to the High Court for a final and definitive ruling, which is expected within a few months. 'There are many judges in the High Court who will either dismiss this case on its face or not order the army to stop demolitions until they rule,' Amar-Shiff told Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, settlers and Israeli troops are escalating attacks against Palestinians living in the area. Sami Hourani, a researcher from Masafer Yatta for Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation, said the Israeli army has confiscated dozens of cars since declaring its intent to ethnically cleanse the villages. He added that the army is arresting solidarity activists trying to visit the area, as well as helping settlers to attack and expel Palestinians. 'We are in an isolation stage now,' Hourani told Al Jazeera, adding that the villages in Masafer Yatta are under siege and cut off from the outside world. 'We are expecting the army to carry out massive demolitions at any moment.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Israel Far-Right Issues Rare Rebuke of Settler Attack on Army
An assault by Israeli settlers on soldiers in the occupied West Bank drew condemnation from across the political spectrum, including an unusual rebuke from far-right ministers who typically support the settlement movement. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, considered the two most hardline members of the ruling coalition, called for the perpetrators to be held accountable. The army said dozens of "civilians" attacked its forces on Sunday night at a military base in the central West Bank, vandalizing army vehicles and a security installation. According to Israeli media, the attackers were settlers who targeted the commander of the military's Binyamin Regional Brigade, calling him a "traitor". The attack was widely seen as a reprisal for the arrest of six settlers two days earlier. In that incident, the commander and troops were attacked as they tried to stop settlers entering a closed military zone near the Palestinian village of Kafr Malik. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned both attacks, saying "no law-abiding country can tolerate acts of violence and anarchy". Ben-Gvir was among the last senior figures to react. "Harming our security forces, security installations and the soldiers who are our children, brothers and defenders, crosses a red line, and must be treated with the utmost severity," he wrote on X. A lawyer, Ben-Gvir gained a name for himself before entering politics by defending in court several settlers accused of attacking Palestinians in the West Bank. Smotrich wrote on X: "Violence against (Israeli) soldiers and our beloved police forces and the destruction of property are unacceptable." - West Bank violence - Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and violence has surged there since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza following Hamas's October 2023 attack. Since then, Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank have killed at least 947 Palestinians -- many of them militants, but also scores of civilians -- according to Palestinian health ministry figures. At least 35 Israelis, including both civilians and security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations, according to Israeli official figures. But settler attacks on army positions are rare. "It was too much, even for the far-right," said Simon Perry, a security expert and associate professor in the criminology department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "The rioters went overboard," he told AFP. Nimrod Goren, an expert on foreign relations and a veteran commentator on Israeli politics, said the far-right's outrage at the assault was merely "lip service", however. Violent assaults by Israeli settlers against Palestinians have become common since 2023, without drawing any criticism from the political class, he noted. "But when soldiers are affected, all of a sudden people are alerted," said Goren, who is chairman of the Israeli foreign policy think tank Mitvim. - Settlers' eviction drive - According to the two Israeli experts, the rioters were part of an informal movement known as the hilltop youth, whose goal is to evict Palestinian residents and establish settlements in the West Bank without government approval. The movement constitutes a fringe, even among the Religious Zionist movement, the ideological backbone of the settlement enterprise. Several human rights NGOs have denounced the rise in violence committed by the settlers, and their perceived impunity. Shortly after his appointment in November 2024, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced an end to administrative detention for West Bank settlers, a practice that allows security forces to detain suspects without charge. Israeli media say the move emboldened extremist settlers and led to a wave of attacks in the Palestinian territory. On Tuesday, the Israeli press reported that Katz would not bring it back, contrary to the opinion of Israel's Shin Bet security service. The measure is still in place for Palestinians. The recent settler violence against army positions in the West Bank even prompted condemnation from leaders within the movement. "Those who wish to protest must act according to the law and not confront the army," Oded Revivi, a former mayor of the Efrat settlement, and a prominent settler figure, told AFP. There are around 160 Israeli settlements scattered throughout the West Bank, which the UN considers illegal. Their residents number about 500,000, living among a population of three million Palestinians.
Al Jazeera
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Israeli settlers attack Israeli soldiers in occupied West Bank
Israeli settlers attack Israeli soldiers in occupied West Bank NewsFeed Israeli settlers targeted Israeli soldiers in an occupied West Bank riot, attacking them for trying to contain settler violence against Palestinians. Video Duration 00 minutes 56 seconds 00:56 Video Duration 00 minutes 31 seconds 00:31 Video Duration 02 minutes 28 seconds 02:28 Video Duration 01 minutes 11 seconds 01:11 Video Duration 02 minutes 06 seconds 02:06 Video Duration 01 minutes 14 seconds 01:14 Video Duration 01 minutes 17 seconds 01:17
