WEST BANK (Dispatches) –
Violence by extremist Zionist settlers against Palestinians and their properties across the occupied West Bank is escalating, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh warned and condemned the attacks against local communities in the occupied territories.
Speaking at a weekly cabinet session in the northeastern West Bank city of Tubas, Shtayyeh stated that the Palestinian Authority condemns the seizure of Palestinian farms by hundreds of settlers in northern West Bank as well as their putting of signs on the roads prohibiting farmers from reaching their lands.
“Tubas and the Jordan Valley areas witness gradual annihilation of the West Bank. Israel continues to destroy the Palestinian lands, plows them with tanks and heavy military vehicles, and destroys all elements of Palestinian steadfastness,” he said.
Shtayyeh added that Zionist regime authorities “are expelling the Palestinians from their living places under the pretext of military training and prevent them from returning to their homes.”
The Palestinian prime minister’s remarks came as settlers stormed the West Bank Palestinian town of Huwara, and vandalized stores, homes, and vehicles in a violent attack that left three Palestinians injured.
According to Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, the attack occurred in full view of Israeli military forces, who often heavily patrol that section of the road.
Yesh Din said that a group of settlers arrived in a convoy of cars accompanied by Zionist troops, from the direction of the Tapuah junction, and that the convoy played loud music.
The convoy stopped in Huwara, which lies south of Nablus. Those in the vehicles threw stones at Palestinian cars, stores, and homes, shattering windows and injuring three Palestinians, the rights group noted.
In a separate development on Monday, an Israeli research institute and think tank affiliated with Tel Aviv University presented its annual assessment to the regime’s president.
The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) warned that the absence of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “poses a serious threat” to the occupying regime’s status on the international stage.
“The security situation in the West Bank is nearing a boiling point due to the weakness of the Palestinian Authority in the face of united opposition from various factions and street gangs,” it said.
“Internationally, there is growing criticism of Israel, which in fact works to thwart the chances of implementing” the so-called two-state solution and “intensifies the danger of legal moves against the regime and its definition as an apartheid regime.”
The INSS also asserted that in the besieged Gaza Strip, “Israel currently faces the same complex and long-lasting dilemma: the need for an urgent response to the humanitarian situation, while avoiding security escalation.”
On Monday, Palestinians held a funeral procession for a 57-year-old man who died of tear gas inhalation during a Zionist raid on a refugee camp north of the city of Al-Quds.
The victim, identified as Fahmi Hamad, was one of the three Palestinians hospitalized after the Zionist troops stormed the Qalandiya camp.
Local medical sources said Zionist troops fired a barrage of gas bombs and rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinians, who protested the raid, as well as a clinic run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The occupation forces, they added, also ransacked several Palestinian houses and shops.
Hamad suffered from severe effects of tear gas inhalation while inside the UNRWA clinic and was rushed to a hospital in the occupied West Bank city Ramallah, but he succumbed to his wounds, according to the medical sources.
One of Hamad’s relatives said the man had chronic health issues, such as kidney failure and diabetes, and constantly visited the clinic for medical treatment.