RAMALLAH 

Several Palestinians were injured on Friday due to attacks carried out by Israeli settlers against gatherings and properties in several areas of the occupied West Bank.

“Israeli settlers attacked the Arab Mleihat Bedouin gathering, northwest of Jericho city, eastern the West Bank, and raided 12 homes,” Hassan Mleihat, the general supervisor of the Al-Baidar organization for defending the rights of Bedouins, told Anadolu.

Mleihat added that “a group of armed settlers, under the protection of the Israeli occupation army, stormed the gathering and raided the homes.”

He indicated that “12 homes were raided and forcefully searched and their contents were vandalized.”

Mleihat pointed out that the population of the gathering is estimated at about 1,200 Palestinians. He said that the settlers “physically assaulted several residents, leading to the injury of at least 5 of them with bruises during the home searches.”

Mleihat stated that the search and assault operations were accompanied by gunfire, tear gas, and assaults on residents.

The Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that settlers attacked the villages of East Laban, southern Nablus, and Kafr Malik, eastern Ramallah.

It added that settlers “fired live ammunition at citizens and their homes and shops, and chased a group of young men” on the outskirts of the village.

Wafa reported that “settlers attacked, on Friday, citizens in the village of Kafr Malik, under the protection of the Israeli occupation army, which arrested two youths.”

The agency also said that “a number of settlers attacked citizens under the protection of the Israeli forces in the Ain Samia area (in Kafr Malik), while the occupation arrested two youths from the neighboring village of Al-Mughayyir.”

In turn, the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission CWRC (a government body) documented other attacks by settlers near Ramallah, where they “attacked farmers and uprooted olive trees in the village of Turmus Ayya, near Ramallah, and attacked the vehicles of citizens near the town of Ein Yabrud, northern the city.”

The commission, in a Facebook post, said that “settlers attacked the homes of citizens in the Al-Fawar camp, southern Hebron city, in the southern West Bank.”

According to the commission's data in its annual report, settlers carried out 2,410 attacks against Palestinians and their properties in the West Bank in 2023, during which 25 Bedouin gatherings, including 22 after Oct. 7, 2023, were displaced.

Since the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, settlers have escalated their attacks in the West Bank, while the army has intensified its raid and arrest operations, leaving 417 dead and nearly 4,650 injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Israel has launched a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

At least 30,035 Palestinians have since been killed and over 70,457 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.​​​​​​​

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala