AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime has been using settler violence as a “major informal tool” to drive Palestinians from farming and pasture lands in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli rights group said Sunday.
A report by the group B’Tselem detailed the takeover of nearly 11 square miles (30 square kilometers) of farm and pasture land in the territory by settlers over the past five years. That’s an area around half the size of the island of Manhattan.
B’Tselem also challenged repeated claims by the regime that violence against Palestinians is carried out by a violent fringe among the settlers and troops are doing their best to stop it.
Recent months have seen a steep increase in violence committed by settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians. Last week, a group of Zionist settlers vandalized dozens of cars in a town near Ramallah, and in September, dozens of settlers attacked a Bedouin village in the southern West Bank, leaving several injured, including a Palestinian toddler.
B’Tselem said the military “does not prevent the attacks, and in some cases, soldiers even participate in them.” It says that law enforcement does little to take action against settlers who commit violent acts against Palestinians “and whitewashes the few cases it is called upon to address.”
“When the violence occurs with permission and assistance from the Israeli authorities and under its auspices, it is regime-backed violence. The settlers are not defying the regime; they are doing its bidding,” the organization said in its report.
The occupying regime captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. In the decades since, it has built dozens of settlements — now home to nearly 500,000 Zionists — that most of the international community considers illegal. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, along with east Al-Quds and the Gaza Strip, as part of their future state.
On Friday, a group of settlers attacked Palestinians harvesting olives.