In the intensive care room in the Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation (BASR) lies four-year-old Jibreel Sawarka. The Palestinian toddler is in an extremely critical condition after being hit in a car ramming attack by an Israeli settler in the Palestinian village of Kisan east of Bethlehem in the Occupied West Bank.
Jibreel was playing near his house with his brother when the settler struck him with his car and then fled.
Jibreel’s father Mohammed said: &ldquoMy 13-year-old Yehya came holding his brother covered in blood &mdash it was a very gruesome sight.&rdquo Mohammed noted that the street where his son was attacked is used by both illegal Israeli settlers and Palestinians who live in Kisan. However Palestinians are not allowed to drive down the road instead they must walk the length of it. There have been multiple hit-and-run attacks on this stretch of road and they have recently increased in frequency.
OCHA has documented 591 settler-related incidents resulting in Palestinian casualties property damage or both in the first six months of 2023 reaching a monthly average of 99 attacks this year.
Settler terrorism has persisted in the occupied West Bank for years. The attacks have risen since Israel swore in its most right-wing government in December. Now illegal settlers are in power in the Israeli Knesset and are working to legalize settler violence under the definition of &ldquoself-defense&rdquo even as they incite violence and hate.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich outlined his &ldquoDecisive Plan&rdquo a vision in which he called for &ldquovictory through settlement&rdquo. The plan proposed and penned in 2017 would require &ldquothe encouragement of tens and hundreds of thousands of residents to come live in Judea and Samaria&rdquo the Biblical name for the occupied West Bank and almost double the number of settlers in the occupied territories.
The government has given Smotrich practically all control over the expansion of existing settlements.
During the past week alone two Palestinians were executed by Israeli fire. In the town of Silwad east of Ramallah a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager succumbed to the wounds he sustained days before after an illegal Jewish settler opened fire at him while he was in a car near the illegal settlement of Ofra.
In a separate incident armed Jewish settlers raided the Palestinian village of Burqa and opened fire at residents executing 19-year-old Qusai Maatan. The teen’s father Jammal said: &ldquoMy son was defending us.&rdquo
&ldquoWhen he heard the screaming of the villagers during the invasion he ran out quickly to confront the Zionist settlers and stop them.&rdquo Qusai was the family’s bread-winner.
&ldquoWe only have stones to prevent them from continuing to terrorize our people and razing our properties&rdquo Jammal said adding that the settlers also set fire to two Palestinian vehicles. &ldquoThe settlers also brought their sheep to a plot of land in an apparent attempt to seize it for the benefit of establishing a pastoral outpost.&rdquo
Israeli newspaper Ynet News reported that recent Israeli terror attacks can be described as premeditated and well-organized acts of provocation specifically designed to target Palestinian civilians.
The settler who murdered Maatan had served as a spokesperson for a member of Israel’s Knesset who is a member of racist minister Otamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party. He came from the illegal Ramat Migron outpost. After his arrest he was released and the case was closed with investigators convinced that the settler acted in self-defense. In a bold and clear statement Ben-Gvir Israel’s national security minister praised the murderer and indicated that he should get a &ldquomedal of honor.&rdquo
Haaretz also recently revealed videos of Israeli settlers escorted by heavily armed occupation forces invading Palestinian homes in the West Bank villages of Tuba and El-Abid in the southern Hebron Hills in the same week as the attack on Burqa. The video shows Israeli settlers ordering a Palestinian woman to open a storage closet in her home.
In another video a settler is seen entering a home as a soldier stands at the entrance. Settler violence against Palestinians takes many forms including setting fire to fields and livestock physical violence shooting car-rammings theft and vandalism of property trees and crops and intimidating farmers and their families among other attacks.
This after less than a year of this right-wing government being in power what awaits the Palestinian cause is extremely dangerous if the Israeli occupation authorities continue to fund and encourage the relentless Israeli settler violence and attacks.
– Wafa Aludaini is a Gaza-based journalist and activist. Her article appeared in MEMO.
