Israeli settler violence increases in Palestine: UN agencies, NGOs

“Last year, the number of settler attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties and property damage increased by more than a third; since 2009 it increased by nearly 150 percent,” said a July 11 joint statement issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq and the Israeli NGOs Yesh Din and B’Tselem.

Jessica Montell, the director of B’Tselem, said in a joint press conference with representatives of the other groups in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday that there were “two distinct phenomena” regarding the issue.

The first was the “price tag phenomenon” and the second was “displacing Palestinians” and expanding the illegal settlements in “a very explicit way.”

    Pauline Nunu of the EAPPI also stated that the Israeli settlement expansion is “scaring the Palestinians and threatening them and forcing them to leave their community so that the settlers will take over the land.”

According to the UN figures, over 90 percent of complaints filed against Israeli settlers have not been addressed in recent years.

The participants at the Wednesday press conference also censured the Tel Aviv regime over the issue of settler violence.

Illegal Israeli settlers often assault the Palestinians or vandalize their properties in the occupied territories.

    On June 17, an Israeli settler shot dead two Palestinians in the city of al-Khalil in the southern West Bank.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).