Church leaders, diplomats, condemn Israeli settler violence in West Bank

Top religion leaders and diplomats person called connected Israeli settlers to beryllium held accountable during a sojourn to the predominantly Christian municipality of Taybeh successful the occupied West Bank, aft settlers intensified attacks connected the country successful caller weeks.

Representatives from much than 20 countries including the United Kingdom, Russia, China, Japan, Jordan, and the European Union, were among the delegates who visited the colony successful the West Bank connected Monday.

Speaking successful Taybeh, Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III and Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa denounced an incidental past week erstwhile settlers acceptable fires adjacent the community’s church.

They said that Israeli authorities failed to respond to exigency calls for assistance from the Palestinian community.

In a abstracted statement, the patriarchs and heads of churches successful Jerusalem demanded an probe into the incidental and called for the settlers to beryllium held accountable by the Israeli authorities, “who facilitate and alteration their beingness astir Taybeh”.

The religion leaders besides said that settlers had brought their cattle to graze connected Palestinian lands successful the area, acceptable occurrence to respective homes past month, and enactment up a motion speechmaking “there is nary aboriginal for you here”.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Doha, said religion leaders person been calling this a “systemic and targeted attack” against Christians.

“About 50,000 of them unrecorded successful the occupied West Bank, a tiny but precise arrogant minority,” Ibrahim said. “They besides see themselves nether attack, not conscionable due to the fact that they’re Christians but because they’re Palestinians.”

The religion has been trying for years to “enhance the steadfastness of the Christian assemblage successful Palestine”, Ibrahim said.

“We’ve been seeing however Israeli settlers person been pushing them retired of their lands, retired of their homes.”

Settlers, who are often armed, are backed by Israeli service soldiers and regularly transportation retired attacks against Palestinians, their lands, and property. Several rights groups person documented repeated instances wherever Israeli settlers successful the West Bank ransack Palestinian neighbourhoods and towns, burning homes and vehicles.

Assaults person grown successful standard and strength since Israel’s brutal warfare connected Gaza began successful October 2023. These assaults besides see large-scale incursions by Israeli forces into Palestinian towns and cities crossed the West Bank that person killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands.

Pizzaballa, the apical Catholic cleric successful Jerusalem, said helium believed the West Bank was becoming a lawless area.

“The lone instrumentality [in the West Bank] is that of power, of those who person the force, not the law. We indispensable enactment for the instrumentality to instrumentality to this portion of the country, truthful anyone tin entreaty to the instrumentality to enforce their rights,” Pizzaballa told reporters.

He and Theophilos prayed unneurotic astatine the Church of St George, whose spiritual tract dates backmost centuries, adjacent to the country wherever settlers ignited the fires.

The sojourn comes arsenic Palestinians study a caller surge of settler violence.

On Monday, Israeli settlers and soldiers launched respective much attacks crossed the West Bank, including successful Bethlehem, wherever settlers uprooted hundreds of olive trees in al-Maniya village, southeast of the city, and Israeli authorities demolished a four-storey residential building.

The caput of the al-Maniya colony council, Zayed Kawazba, told Wafa quality bureau that a radical of settlers stormed al-Qarn successful the centre of al-Maniya, acceptable up 4 tents and uprooted astir 1,500 olive saplings belonging to families from the al-Motawer and Jabarin clans.

A time earlier, hundreds descended connected the colony of Al-Mazraa ash-Sharqiya, southbound of Taybeh, for the ceremonial of 2 young men killed during a settler onslaught connected Friday.

The occupied West Bank is location to much than 3 cardinal Palestinians who unrecorded nether harsh Israeli subject rule, with the Palestinian Authority governing successful constricted areas separated from each different by a myriad of Israeli checkpoints.

Israel has truthful acold built much than 100 settlements crossed the West Bank, which are location to astir 500,000 settlers who unrecorded illegally connected private Palestinian land.

Source:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies