Human Rights Glance
The UN humanitarian relief chief, Tom Fletcher, has sounded the alarm over rising violence in the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and their property continue to escalate.
“Many of these attacks are linked to Palestinians’ attempts to harvest their olive crops,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Palestinians have been killed and injured. Their homes and property damaged. Their livestock attacked.”
Mr. Fletcher said that more trees have been damaged, and more communities affected this year than in the previous six years combined.
“The failure to prevent or punish such attacks is inconsistent with international law,” he warned. “Palestinians must be protected. Impunity cannot prevail. Perpetrators must be held accountable.”
His remarks follow warnings from the UN Spokesperson’s Office last week that violence by Israeli settlers has surged across the West Bank, often under the watch of Israeli security forces.
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that the Higher Planning Council will approve the construction of 1,973 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank during its next session.
Brooklyn-based writer and reporter Jasper Nathaniel was going through the Turmus Ayya olive fields in the West Bank when he captured the spine-chilling footage showing masked Israeli settlers beating Palestinian settlers senseless, armed with crude melee weapons.
The most popular and potentially unifying Palestinian leader — Marwan Barghouti — is not among the prisoners Israel intends to free in exchange for hostages held by Hamas under the new Gaza ceasefire deal.
Dozens were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza on Saturday, local health officials said, despite a demand from U.S. President Donald Trump for Israel to stop bombing in response to a declaration by Hamas that it was ready to free hostages under his plan to end the two-year-old war.
Rebecca Shouhed watched the surveillance video in horror, as one immigration agent knocked her 79-year-old, U.S. citizen father to the ground inside his car wash business. When he got back up and went outside, two others tackled him to the pavement.
