Israeli settlers Tuesday morning assaulted Palestinian families and uprooted 35 olive trees in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, according to local sources.
They confirmed that the settlers assaulted several houses belonging to the Es‘ifan family in the Hebron’s neighborhood of Wadi al-Hasin, northeast of the city.
Settlers also physically assaulted members of the Abu Halawa family and uprooted 35 olive trees and other summer crops from a 2-donum plot of land in al-Rayhiya town, southwest of the city.
The assailants came from Hagai, one of the Israeli colonial settlements notorious for their hardcore fanatic community in Hebron district.
The city of Hebron, which houses the Ibrahimi Mosque, is home to roughly 160,000 Palestinian Muslims and about 800 notoriously aggressive Israeli settlers who live in compounds heavily guarded by Israeli troops.
Israel has expelled the only international monitors protecting Hebron’s Palestinians from 800 heavily guarded settlers, one of whom committed the 1994 massacre that triggered their deployment.
Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Source: Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA