JERUSALEM/ANKARA

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Saturday that illegal Israeli settlers are killing Palestinians every day in the occupied West Bank.

Olmert told Channel 13 TV that Israelis are killing Palestinians daily in "Judea and Samaria" (the West Bank), and the far-right "Hilltop Youth" are committing war crimes.

He dismissed claims that the group is a minority as “a lie,” saying: “They are not a minority, on the contrary, they are supported. Otherwise, they couldn’t be doing this.”

Olmert told the BBC on May 21 that the administration in Tel Aviv was committing war crimes not only in Gaza but daily in the West Bank.

On July 11, Israelis who had seized Palestinian lands beat a Palestinian and fatally shot another in the town of Sinjil, north of Ramallah.

At least 998 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Israel has since killed nearly 58,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children.

The International Court of Justice declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land illegal last July and demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.