Israeli attacks by occupation forces and illegal settlers on Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank are continuing to rise, with multiple assaults, land seizures, arson attacks and thefts reported, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.
Late on Tuesday night, large groups of illegal settlers, under the protection of Israeli occupation forces, set fire to extensive Palestinian-owned agricultural land in the Wadi Yasuf area, south of Nablus. Residents were blocked from reaching the area to assess the damage.
The same area witnessed the construction of a settler-only road and the bulldozing of Palestinian farmland last week by settlers from the Kfar Tapuach settlement, illegally built on land belonging to the villages of Yasuf and Iskaka, east of Salfit.
In Hebron, Israeli forces on Tuesday evening handed over the body of 35-year-old Ahmed Rubhi Al-Atrash, who was killed two days earlier after being shot by an illegal Jewish settler at the northern entrance of the city.
Assaults during the olive harvest
In the town of Beit Anan, northwest of occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli forces assaulted two Palestinian brothers while they were harvesting olives on their land.
According to one of the brothers, Adham Jamhour, soldiers detained them, confiscated their vehicle, and seized their olive harvest before later releasing them from a nearby military camp.
In northwest of Ramallah, illegal Israeli settlers raided Palestinian-owned agricultural areas and stole harvested olives. WAFA reported that settlers from an illegal outpost built on Attara’s land took the crops from fields east of the town, while others grazed livestock on private Palestinian property and stole water from a local well.
These attacks come amid a growing pattern of settler violence and military-backed land confiscation during the olive harvest season — a period when Palestinian farmers are routinely attacked and prevented from accessing their fields.
