Israel is just as determined to rid the West Bank of Palestinians as they are in Gaza. From Mairav Zonszein at archive.ph:
On Oct. 10, the same day the cease-fire went into effect in Gaza, a group of Palestinians in the West Bank village of Beita set out to harvest their olives when they were assaulted by a group of Israelis. Twenty Palestinians were reported wounded, including two elderly men; one man was hospitalized with a bullet wound. Nine days later, a masked Israeli settler was filmed by an American journalist as he beat a 53-year-old Palestinian woman with a club in the village of Turmus Aya. She was knocked unconscious, and the video clip captured her as she fell to the ground under an olive tree. On Oct. 25, video footage showed a settler and soldiers assaulting a 65-year-old Palestinian man in Nahalin, near Bethlehem, in front of his family. On Nov. 8, Palestinian harvesters in Beita once again came under attack. Israeli activists who joined them to provide a protective presence were assaulted as well, including a 77-year-old art school principal, who suffered a broken jaw and cheekbone. Two Reuters employees were injured in the incident.
Most of the assailants have not been apprehended. The United Nations reported that this October — peak olive harvest season in the West Bank — saw the highest number of settler attacks in the area since it began documenting them in 2006. Over 260 attacks were recorded, an average of eight per day.
This is a serious acceleration of violence, but it is not new or isolated. Since the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers; one in every five dead is a child. In the same period, over 3,000 Palestinians say they have been displaced from their homes and lands largely because of Israeli settler violence. Another estimated 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the northern West Bank by Israel Defense Force operations. In the past two years, Israel has erected nearly 1,000 barriers and makeshift checkpoints across the West Bank, suffocating Palestinians’ ability to move and work freely.
