RAMALLAH, Palestine/ISTANBUL

An illegal Israeli settler violently assaulted an elderly Palestinian woman while she was picking olives east of Ramallah in the West Bank, a video circulated on social media showed on Sunday.

The footage showed a masked settler wielding a stick attacking the woman and repeatedly striking her on the head until she collapsed to the ground, before assaulting two foreign activists among the olive trees.

Awad Abu Samra, a local activist in the town of Turmus Ayya, told Anadolu the attack took place in the eastern area of the town.

“The settlers attacked us while we were harvesting olives and chased us. One woman fell behind, and a settler hit her on the head with a stick until she fainted. He then attacked two foreign activists at the same site, breaking one of their arms,” Abu Samra said.

He added that the victim, Afaf Saleh Abu Alia, in her fifties, was transferred to the Consultative Hospital in Ramallah for treatment, describing her condition as stable.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese condemned the attack.

“For 2 years, the world has seen scenes like this from the West Bank. I wonder where decent Israelis are; those who protest in Tel Aviv. Hatred of Hamas is one thing, but do they not feel some obligation to act to stop their fellow citizens behaving like criminals on the loose?” Albanese said on the US social media company X.

Separately, one Palestinian was critically injured and another suffered minor injuries from Israeli gunfire in the Jalazone refugee camp in Ramallah, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.

The official Voice of Palestine Radio said that the Israeli army sent reinforcements to the camp and arrested a young man in the area.

According to data by the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, illegal Israeli settlers carried out 7,154 assaults on Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank over the course of two years, which resulted in the death of 34 Palestinians and forced migration of 33 Bedouin communities.

Local authorities said that more than 1,056 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, around 10,300 wounded, and over 20,000 arrested, including 1,600 children, since the Gaza war began two years ago.

In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.