In Part Two of the in-depth article from the Intercept on Israel’s decades-long campaign against Palestinians, read about how the Israeli military partners with settlers, using harassment, violence, and clandestine moves, to control Palestinian land. Palestinians are left with noncontiguous “Bantustans,” where they are still unable to live in peace.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls for “both sides” to de-escalate tensions in the Palestinian West Bank. Since the start of the year, Israeli forces have killed 72 Palestinians; 12 Israelis have also been killed.
Three recent stories from +972 Magazine contain firsthand accounts by Palestinians of their harrowing experiences at the hands of Israeli settlers – attacked while driving, harvesting olives, and protecting their own land. Israeli military complicity is a recurring theme.
Dozens of Israeli settlers swooped down in an act of violence on a Palestinian family tending its olive grove – throwing stones and beating them. Three Palestinians were wounded; the eldest remains hospitalized. When the family filed a complaint, they were interrogated for allegedly throwing rocks.
Despite the increase in violence, Israeli forces continue their practice of not intervening to stop the attacks in most cases, and often actively join in, B’Tselem rights group says.
Imagine white supremacists routinely invading suburbs and rural villages to terrorize Black people. Now imagine these attacks growing so extreme that white supremacists can even take over the homes and land of those Black people, simply because they can, knowing the authorities will turn a blind eye… That’s what Israel does year after year after year to Palestinians – while US politicians from both parties continue to send Israel over $10 million per day…
As Israel criticizes Palestinians for their legal resistance against an illegal occupation, illegal Israeli settlers attack Palestinians on a daily basis – often with protection from the Israeli military – and go unpunished. Sometimes they destroy crops, sometimes vehicles; sometimes it’s graffiti; this week a member of the Israeli parliament called for open violence, and settlers obeyed.
In 2022, Israeli soldiers and settlers are responsible for the highest monthly average of Palestinians killed since the UN started counting fatalities in 2005; October also saw Israeli soldiers/settlers carry out almost 1,200 attacks against Palestinians.
It’s a decades-old power imbalance: When a teenage Israeli was killed (after Israeli soldiers had killed a Palestinian shepherd), decades-old settler violence reached new levels
Amnesty International: An alarming spike in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians across the West Bank highlights the urgent need to dismantle illegal settlements, end Israel’s occupation and its longstanding system of apartheid.