Israeli settlers damage Palestinian properties in West Bank attack
Illegal Israeli settlers have once more staged an attack on Palestinian properties, damaging homes in the occupied West Bank.
Local reports said on Sunday that the Israeli forces torched three vehicles and stole house doors in Palestinian properties in the West Bank.
A group of illegal Israeli settlers stormed two houses in Hawara town, south of Nablus in the northern West Bank, and spray-painted threatening messages on the walls. Two Palestinian vehicles were also torched.
The Wafa news agency reported that illegal Israeli settlers burned a third vehicle in the Al-Jaba town of Bethlehem in the southern West Bank.
In Turmus Aya town in northeastern Ramallah, Wafa reported, another group of illegal settlers also raided Palestinian properties and stole doors of houses under construction.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, an official advocacy body, has recorded 621 attacks by illegal Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank in November.
Official Palestinian data shows that by the end of 2024, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank had reached about 770,000 Zionists living in more than 180 illegal settlements and more than 250 settlement outposts.
A Palestinian anti-settlement group says Israel is accelerating the process of legalizing settlements, aiming to hinder the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state.
In a landmark ruling last July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared the Israeli regime’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal, and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds.
The Israeli regime’s “relentless” expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territory has been condemned by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
The issue of illegal Israeli settlements “continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous and sovereign Palestinian State,” Guterres said earlier this month.
Despite the condemnations, the Israeli regime’s war cabinet approved 19 more settlements in the West Bank.
“The proposal … to declare and formalize 19 new settlements in Judea and Samaria has been approved by the cabinet,” the regime said in a statement without specifying when the decision was made.
The Palestinian group has strongly condemned an Israeli plan on legalizing at least 19 Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank,
“We will continue to develop, build, and settle the land of our ancestral heritage, with faith in the justice of our path,” said far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a vocal proponent of settlement expansion and a settler himself.
Israeli forces carried out mass arrests and forced dozens of families from their homes in the town of Qabatiya in the occupied West Bank.
Saturday was the second day of a sweeping military raid ordered by Israel’s war minister, Israel Katz. He said he had ordered “a lockdown and a complete cordon” around Qabatiya.
Earlier, Israel’s Army Radio reported that the town is subject to a “full curfew.”
Two Israeli settlers have been killed in an alleged car-ramming and stabbing attack in the northern part of Occupied Palestine, and the purported Palestinian suspect has been shot dead.
Local sources said on Saturday that the entrances to Qabatiya were sealed off while Israeli forces rounded up and interrogated dozens of residents.
Wafa reported that Israeli forces turned several Palestinian homes into military interrogation centers, displacing the residents.
