Occupied West Bank: Israeli settlers escalate violence

Israeli settlers attacked olive pickers in the occupied West Bank, while Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in Nablus on October 19th, the Middle East Eye and agencies reported on October 19th.

The man was named by the Palestinian Ministry of Health as Majed Mohammad Dawoud, a 42-year-old who was killed during a raid on the al-Ain refugee camp in the early morning hours of October 19th. Witnesses said that Israeli forces prevented medical teams from reaching Dawoud before soldiers dragged his body through the streets as he bled to death.

Meanwhile, Palestinian farmers in the town of Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah, were attacked by armed Israeli settlers. Video footage of the attacks showed masked settlers beating people with a baton. Settlers also set fire to four vehicles and stole the harvested olive crop, Wafa news agency reported.

Israel has been accused of committing genocide, in its war on Gaza, due to Israel’s burning of agricultural land, a key source of income for Palestinians.

According to Lucia Rebolino, co-author of a study by Forensic Architecture: “The environment is not just collateral damage, but a target of the Israeli army. Israeli bulldozers have razed fields and orchards to clear a buffer zone more than 300 metres deep along the northern border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.”

In 2022, Israeli forces confiscated over 113,000 dunams (113 square kilometres) of land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in a bid to broaden Jewish-only settlements. The destruction of food sources, such as olive trees, was part of this military campaign.

The occupied West Bank, where over 500,000 Israeli settlers live, has increasingly become a site of Israeli violence and intimidation. Plans to expand the settlements by annexing 82% of the West Bank were announced on September 3rd. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on the plans, which would enable the construction of over 3,400 housing units for Israelis.

Despite the settlement plan being illegal under international law, the Israeli government has remained insistent that the expansion continues. On September 11th, Netanyahu visited the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, one of the largest in the West Bank, and announced to the settlement’s 40,000 inhabitants that “there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us.”

The proposed annexation would effectively cut the West Bank into two and practically remove the possibility of a territorially contiguous Palestinian state, which was formally recognised by Western nations, including the UK.

Middle East Eye and agencies, Wafa, Maghrebi.org