A group of Israeli settlers attacked a number of commercial shops owned by Palestinians on Friday in central Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank near Israel’s illegal Kiryat Arba settlement.
A group of Israeli settlers threw rocks and garbage at commercial shops under the protection of Israeli army forces.
Settler attacks on Palestinians, their homes, and properties are a routine occurrence in Hebron, where the settlers are notoriously aggressive to Palestinian residents. Meanwhile, settlers from Kiryat Arba in eastern Hebron are well-known to be among some of the most extremist settlers residing in the West Bank.
Terror on #Palestinians from #Israeli Occupiers in Occupied Hebron today…kidnapping youths after bounding their hands pic.twitter.com/hkFgRXkFDN
— Abbs Winston (@AbbsWinston) May 26, 2017
Settlers from Kiryat Arba also routinely attack Palestinian shop owners and homes in the Old City of Hebron, a location of strategic importance for Israeli settlers eager to expand even deeper into Palestinian communities. Rights groups have pointed out that such violence committed on the Palestinian population has served to force local residents out in order to make room for a larger settler presence in the area.
Baruch Goldstein, an American-born settler from Kiryat Arba, killed 29 Palestinian Muslims in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994. Following the massacre, Israeli forces divided the Old City of Hebron into Palestinian and Israeli-controlled areas, known as H1 and H2.
Occupied Hebron: Israeli Occupiers kidnapped a Palestinian child from school until one of the teachers confronted them and rescued the boy. pic.twitter.com/eTw0onzIA7
— Abbs Winston (@AbbsWinston) May 26, 2017
Some 800 notoriously aggressive Israeli settlers now live under the protection of the Israeli military in the Old City, surrounded by more than 30,000 Palestinians.
(Maan, PC, Social Media)