WEST BANK (Dispatches) –
European officials have slammed rising Zionist settler attacks on Palestinian properties and villages and called on Tel Aviv “to do more to hold to account and prevent those who have made the lives of Palestinians … intolerable.”
Representatives from the United Kingdom, European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Finland, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and Norway on Thursday visited the Palestinian community of Burqa which has witnessed increasing settler violence and the demolition of EU-funded schools.
They learned how the community has endured harassment and intimidation from settlers. “They also observed the aftermath of Ras at-Tin’s displacement due to settler attacks and how these attacks intensified after the establishment of an illegal outpost near the community,” their statement said.
“The delegation was extremely alarmed by the growth of settler violence, which alongside demolitions has displaced over 400 Palestinians this year and resulted in several casualties across the West Bank.”
Additionally, diplomats strongly condemned the recent demolition of Ein Samiya school, which was funded by donors as humanitarian relief, emphasizing the Zionist regime’s breach of international humanitarian law. They called on Israel, as the occupying power, to halt all confiscations and demolitions and to give unimpeded access to humanitarian organizations in the occupied West Bank.
More than 750,000 settlers illegally live in the occupied West Bank and East Al-Quds, according to the UN.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has denounced the regime’s plan to speed up the construction of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, calling on Palestinians to resist by all means.
Hamas spokesman Jihad Taha said in a statement on Thursday that the plan was part of the systematic land confiscation policy adopted by the Zionist regime led by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to a plan dubbed “a million for Samaria” that was put forward on Wednesday, occupation authorities eye to have one million settlers in the West Bank region of Samaria by 2050.
Taha said the only way to confront the regime’s plans was through resistance, and that such schemes were bound to fail.
The developments come as far-right Zionist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said his and his family’s rights to safe movement in the occupied West Bank are more important than those of Arabs, downplaying the deadly string of murders in Arab communities.
“My right, and my wife’s and my children’s right, to get around on the roads in Judea and Samaria is more important than the right to movement for Arabs,” he said during an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 news, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.
“Sorry Mohammad,” he provocatively told the Arab journalist and interviewer of Channel 12 Mohammad Magadli, “but that’s the reality. That’s the truth. My right to life comes before their right to movement.