Israeli Authorities Facilitate Impunity As Settlers Attack West Bank Villages, UN Says

The SOURCE ARTICLES frame the war on Gaza through a wider regional lens that includes escalating violence in the occupied West Bank, with Arab News describing Palestinian villages being subjected to arson attacks, shootings, assaults, and the destruction of olive groves.

“West Bank settler violence is no longer the exception For years, the international community has been encouraged to view attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank as isolated incidents carried out by a handful of extremists”

Arab News

Arab News says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has documented hundreds of similar incidents involving assaults, arson, destruction of property, attacks on water infrastructure and forced displacement, and it cites a UN Commission of Inquiry concluding that Israeli authorities facilitated an environment of impunity.

Arab News

In parallel, WAOW reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CNN that a potential U.S. sale of F-35 stealth fighter jets to Turkey “doesn’t make Turkey a friendly state to the United States,” and it quotes Netanyahu warning that “He threatens to destroy my country, the one and only Jewish state.”

WAOW also places Netanyahu’s remarks at a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, and it notes that Netanyahu described Ankara as “a regime that’s infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States.”

Haaretz reports that Netanyahu told CNN that settler attacks in the West Bank are caused by “150 or so, what you call, juvenile delinquents,” adding that authorities “do actually take action against them.”

Haaretz also says Netanyahu told CNN, “I don't accept vigilantes,” and he argued that “Our citizens can't practice violence, whether Arabs or Jewish.”

Haaretz

The Today’s Seven article says Channel 13 revealed that the United States intends to lay out a series of demands on Israel amid American concern about security and humanitarian developments in the West Bank, including requiring Israel to provide clear answers and detailed reports on measures taken by law enforcement authorities and the army.

The Today’s Seven article adds that the American demands include reducing the number of military checkpoints in the West Bank, taking steps to ease restrictions on Palestinian movement, and transferring funds owed to the Palestinian Authority, while Channel 13 says Washington intends to closely monitor implementation.

Arab21 quotes Shira Ben-Sasson, CEO of The New Israel Fund, saying it would be a mistake to treat settler violence as a purely local problem and warning that if these criminal militias are not stopped now, the violence could spark violence on election day.

“CNN's Dana Bash interviews Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday”

WAOW

Arab21 says Ben-Sasson argues that when the state allows extremist settler militias to operate for a long time with little cost, it sends a message that there are areas where the law does not apply equally and that violence can be used to achieve any goal.

Arab21 also describes a “preplanned mode of operation,” saying that on the upcoming election day, instead of settlers reaching Hawara in Nablus, buses will arrive in the Arab towns of Taibe, Umm al-Fahm, and Rahat to identify polling places and threaten voters.

In the same regional context, Arab News warns that the consequences of tolerated violence are “devastating,” saying fear becomes an instrument of demographic change and that the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its civilian population into occupied territory.