Israel settler attacks on Palestinians quadruple: UN
The United Nations figures show that the annual rate of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians has nearly quadrupled in the past eight years.
The figures released on Wednesday also said that Israeli security forces have failed to stop the so-called “price tag” campaign against Palestinians.
There have been 2,100 such attacks since 2006, when the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) started the counting. The annual overalls are up from 115 in 2006 to 399 in 2013.
Israeli settlers, mostly armed, regularly attack Palestinian villages and farms and set fire to their mosques, olive groves and other properties in the West Bank under the so-called “price tag” policy.
The extremists say the “price tag” attacks are carried out against any Israeli policy “to reduce the presence of settlers and settlements on the occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).”
Israeli officials have repeatedly condemned such attacks, but they rarely detain the assailants.
Critics say the Israeli government has not taken enough measures to prevent the attacks.
More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds in 1967.
The United Nations and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.
SAB/PR