An Israeli military official claims that Israel has authorized violent acts against Palestinians throughout the occupied West Bank by extremist Jewish settlers.
Colonel Kobi Merom of the Reserve said, “What we have seen in recent weeks are dozens of terrorist operations by settlers against Palestinian villages, without yielding any arrests.
He continued by claiming that hawkish ministers like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and others have “greenlighted” and are in favor of these attacks.
Read more: Israeli settlers broke into al-Aqsa Mosque placed restrictions on Muslims
“Smotrich endorses the construction of unauthorized outposts. I am not surprised by the armed incident that occurred in the village of Burqa given the state of collapse toward which we are spiraling, Merom said.
He was making reference to the shooting death on August 4 of Qosai Jammal Mi’tan, a 19-year-old Palestinian, by extremist settlers east of Ramallah.
Another young Palestinian, Mahmoud Abu Sa’an, 18, had been killed earlier that day by an Israeli soldier’s gunshot. During their invasion of the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm, Israeli soldiers shot him in the head at close range.
Local witnesses told local news organization Wafa that an Israeli soldier got out of one of the military vehicles and shot Abu Sa’an in the head while he was on the ground.
The Israeli colonel warned, “We are heading toward complete chaos on the ground if the prime minister… does not stop this matter and put his foot down at the cabinet table.
The United Nations issued a warning on Friday, stating that there have been nearly 600 instances of Israeli settlers using price tags as weapons against Palestinians so far this year.
In a statement, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) of the United Nations reported that during the first half of the current year, there were 591 settler-related incidents in the occupied territory that either resulted in casualties, property damage, or both.
“That’s an average of 99 incidents every month, and a 39% increase compared with the monthly average of the entire of 2022, which is 71,” spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva.
While this was going on, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry denounced Israeli Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for referring to the settlers responsible for the 19-year-old Mi’tan’s death as “heroes.”
In a statement, the ministry claimed that Ben-Gvir’s comments “are another call to encourage terrorist settlers to commit more pogroms against Palestinian citizens and to escape punishment later under the flimsy pretext of self-defense’.”
The statement went on to say that the hawkish Israeli minister’s remarks are proof of the hard-right Israeli cabinet’s endorsement and support of settler terrorism and confirm the extent of racial discrimination practiced by Israeli authorities in the West Bank.
“The Israeli government is enforcing two laws in the West Bank: one is used against Palestinian citizens, who may be detained without cause, and the other protects terrorist settlers and their propensity for inciting violence,” it continued.
