Amid muted Eid celebrations, violence surges across the West Bank
Al Jazeera
Settler attacks and land seizures marked a week that was supposed to be one of celebration for Palestinians.
As Muslims across the world marked Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, and as the United States-Israel war on Iran stretched into its fourth week, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have endured an outpouring of violence. Gates at the entrances to many Palestinian communities in the territory, which many Israelis want to illegally annex into their state, were blocked by Israeli settlers, who also burned homes and bulldozed olive groves.
In a move particularly symbolic of the current Israeli policy towards expressions of Palestinian national identity, the Israeli authorities used the current conflict with Iran to justify the emptying of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound of Muslim worshippers during Eid, reportedly for the first time since Israel captured the holy site in 1967. Israeli police additionally used sound grenades and physical force to disperse Palestinians attempting to pray outside the gates of Jerusalem’s Old City, following days of similar forced dispersals of worshippers.
The war had deadlier consequences on March 18, when four Palestinian women were killed by rocket debris in Beit Awwa, in a southern West Bank Palestinian community that, unlike Israeli cities and settlements, lacks air raid sirens or bomb shelters.
And yet, despite the war, Palestinian communities remain focused on the surge of settler violence and movement restrictions imposed since the conflict’s outbreak. Following the Saturday death of Yehuda Sherman, a settler from Beit Imrin, the recent violence peaked in the early hours of Sunday, when approximately 100 masked settlers clad in black descended on the villages of Jalud and Qaryut, south of Nablus.
According to local Palestinian sources, they torched at least five vehicles, set fire to more than 10 homes, burned the Jalud village council building, attacked a fire truck and injured its driver, and attempted to burn a mosque. The attacks continued, despite an Israeli army and police presence on the outskirts of both villages.
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