Official Kan broadcaster indicate that Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have reportedly created a militia to conduct nighttime raids against the Palestinians.
It is asserted that the so-called “Citizen Watch” will support the Israeli occupation force.
On Monday night, settlers started a nighttime patrol along Route 60. South of Nablus, the route runs through the Palestinian suburb of Hawara.
According to Kobi Zayat, a settler, Palestinians have been hurling stones at Israelis on the route that runs through Hawara every day for nearly six months, according to Kan. They assert that they had no other options for getting to central Israel and Jerusalem.
Zayat resides in the unpermitted community of Yitzhar. He continued by saying that following two shootings last week, the settlers made the decision to aid the army in self-defense and heighten their sense of security. There are now worries that armed settlers would exact revenge on local Palestinians.
Omer Bar-Lev, the Israeli minister of internal security, acknowledged that Israelis in the occupied West Bank engage in “organized violence” against Palestinians in January 2022. In recent months, the frequency of settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank that are conducted in front of the eyes of Israeli soldiers has increased. According to the Palestinians, such attacks include violent abuse, arson, and the burning of homes and harvests.
Around 666,000 Israeli settlers are said to reside in 145 sizable settlements and 140 haphazard enclaves (none of which are even officially recognized by the Israeli government) throughout the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli human rights organization Peace Now. International law declares that all Israeli settlers and their colonies are unlawful.
Discriminations against Palestinians
Yesterday, Israeli settlers blocked many roadways in the northern part of the occupied West Bank from being used by Palestinian vehicles.
Numerous Israelis were positioned across the traffic junctions leading to the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, according to Ghassan Daghlas, the person in charge of the settlement file there.
“On the route between Jenin and Nablus, the settlers are posted close to the Hawara checkpoint to the south, the Beit Furik checkpoint to the east, and the Annab checkpoint to the west of the city.”
The highways were “closed to Palestinian cars,” he claimed.
The IDF installed a wire fence in the town of Hawara, south of Nablus, to block the passing of Palestinian cars as a result of the settlers congregating at the Hawara crossing, according to the Anadolu reporter.
Due to the settlers’ presence in the Yitzhar settlement, the bypass route linking Hawara in the south to Deir Sharaf in the west has been shut down entirely.
In order to get to their houses in the northern West Bank, he remarked, “These limitations compelled the Palestinians to use long alternate roads.”
Israel and the occupied Palestinian settlements have been under intense conflict since the beginning of March as a result of Israeli assaults, to which the Palestinians have reacted.
In the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the IDF murdered 17 Palestinians during that time while 14 Israelis were also killed.
Since Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, more than 130 settlements have been constructed, housing some 650,000 extreme Israelis.
