A Palestinian man sustained burns and four vehicles were vandalized on Saturday in an attack carried out by a group of Jewish settlers near the town of Turmus Ayya, north of Ramallah city, in the occupied West Bank, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Awad Abu Samra, a local anti-settlement activist, told WAFA that around 20 Jewish settlers from an adjacent settlement outpost attacked Palestinian families harvesting olives in their own lands and sprayed at least one farmer with pepper spray, causing him burns in the face. The farmer required medical treatment.
The settlers also set fire to a car, then vandalized and punctured the tires of other parked cars belonging to the Palestinian families harvesting the olives, WAFA reported.
Israeli settlers attack Palestinians, bar them from accessing their lands in Hebron pic.twitter.com/HlOh1vEr4q
— ALRAY AGENCY – Gaza (@Alraypsen) October 17, 2021
Over the past three weeks, Jewish settlers have committed violent daily attacks against Palestinian villages and farmers harvesting their olive trees.
Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
“Jewish settler violence should not be analyzed separately from the violence meted out by the Israeli army, but seen within the larger context of the violent Zionist ideology that governs Israeli society entirely,” wrote Palestinian author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud.
Israeli Jewish settlers continue to attack Palestinians and burn their fields and trees.
— Palestine Info Center (@palinfoen) October 16, 2021
“Settler violence has long since become part of Palestinians’ daily life under occupation,” according to the Human Rights Group B’tselem. “Israeli security forces enable these actions, which result in Palestinian casualties – injuries and fatalities – as well as damage to land and property. In some cases, they even serve as an armed escort, or even join in the attacks”.
Between 500,000 and 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.
(The Palestine Chronicle, WAFA, Social Media)
