An international human rights organization has warned about a “sharp increase” in violent assaults by extremist Jewish settlers across the occupied Palestinian territories “under the political cover” of the Israeli regime.
EuroMed Rights, a network of 68 human rights organizations, institutions and individuals based in 30 countries across Europe and the Mediterranean region, on Thursday presented its report at the 54th session of the UN Human Rights Council.
The rights organization representative said the number of settlers’ attacks in the first half of the current year reached 1,148, “nearly equaling the total number of attacks recorded in the (entire) previous year (2022), which was 1,187.”
She added that such violence is committed “under the political cover of the Israeli regime.”
This increase indicates an unprecedented level of violence, with almost no accountability or punishment measures in place, the representative said as EuroMed shared her video on social media, without mentioning her name.
She noted that far-right Israeli ministers’ “provocative rhetoric” is a “major contributor to the significant increase in settler violence, as the Tel Aviv regime supports settlers in various ways, including protecting them from security or judicial prosecution.”
She called upon the international community “to be present on the ground to protect vulnerable Palestinian communities at risk of displacement, as well as to take concrete steps to pressure Israel to end its military occupation.”
In September, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said over 1,100 Palestinians from 28 communities have been displaced since 2022, citing soaring violence and prevention of access to grazing land by illegal Israeli settlers.
More than 700,000 Israelis live in over 279 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
While all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, the occupying regime has stepped up settlement expansion in blatant violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued illegal settlement expansion.
