Rafi Schwartz
Israeli President Isaac Herzog this week condemned the latest outbreak of settler-instigated violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, decrying a recent arson attack near the city of Tulkarm as “shocking and serious” in some of his most high-profile public statements on the longstanding trend to date. Herzog’s comments come during the seasonal olive harvest that brings Palestinian farmers into their neighboring fields, often setting the stage for attacks from groups of Israeli settlers. According to United Nations monitors, settler violence against Palestinians has reached a record high, with some 1,500 incidents recorded this year.
‘Act decisively to eradicate the phenomenon’
While the olive harvest has always been a time for heightened settler violence against Palestinians, this year’s “situation on the ground is out of control,” said Anton Goodman, Partnership Director of Rabbis for Human Rights, to the Haaretz podcast. The group, which monitors rights abuses in the occupied territories, has never seen “such a peak moment of violence” impacting “so many communities” in the West Bank as they have this season, said Goodman. In the latest of such instances, “dozens” of Israeli settlers attacked the Deir Sharaf Bedouin village and Al-Juneidi dairy factory near Tulkarm on Tuesday, “brandishing clubs and setting fire to parked vehicles,” said CNN.
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