By Palestine Chronicle Staff
Israeli settlers set fire to an agricultural tractor and sprayed racist, anti-Arab graffiti “demanding to take revenge on Burin village,” south of Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank on Thursday night.
In March, Israeli NGO Yesh Din revealed that Israeli authorities served indictments in only 8.2 percent of cases of Israeli settlers committing anti-Palestinian crimes in the occupied West Bank in the past three years.
#Settlers set fire to a #Palestinian's bulldozer and wrote racist slogans in a village near occupied #Nablus https://t.co/Fmf9z8xn3G pic.twitter.com/mqU9z9teNG
— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) May 19, 2017
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, with recent announcements of settlement expansion provoking condemnation from the international community.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there were a total of 107 reported settler attacks against Palestinians and their properties in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem in 2016. OCHA has recorded 46 such attacks since the beginning of the year.
The attacks come just one day after 23 year-old Muntaz Bani Shamsa was shot in the head and killed by Israelis settlers in Nablus.
Thousands of Palestinians marched in his funeral hours after he was killed Mourners marched from the main square in the village of Beita, Shamsa’s hometown, towards the village’s cemetery, waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans glorifying Shamsa, while demanding revenge against Israeli settlers.
Muataz Shamsa, 23, was laid to rest after he was shot dead by a Extremist Squatter today—who filed "attempted murder" complaint against him pic.twitter.com/w0Wxuh5JCS
— Abbs Winston (@AbbsWinston) May 18, 2017
Hours after the shooting, Israeli news daily Haaretz reported that the settler was not being investigated by Israeli police as a criminal suspect, and had instead, filed a criminal complaint against the Palestinian protesters, who the settler said were attempting to “lynch” him.
Shamsa was the 23rd Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the start of 2017. Seven Israelis were killed by Palestinians during the same time frame.
(Palestine Chronicle)
