U.N. Demands Israeli Forces Stop Enabling Settler Attacks In West Bank

The human rights office was referring to a recent rash of attacks by armed settlers and Israeli forces against Palestinians in the occupied territory.

The United Nations’ human rights office demanded on Tuesday that Israeli security forces immediately stop participating in and enabling continued attacks by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, as the international community’s fears of a wider regional war continue to grow.

The remarks from Office of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights come in response to a recent settler rampage in several of the West Bank’s Palestinian towns. The latest wave of violence there was triggered by what Israeli authorities said was a militant attack on Friday that killed a 14-year-old Israeli boy from a settler family.

“Neither Palestinians nor Israelis should take the law into their own hands to exact revenge,” OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said during a press briefing in Geneva, calling the escalating violence in the West Bank a “matter of grave concern.”

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least seven Palestinians have been killed either by Israeli security forces or by armed settlers since the attacks began Friday, with an additional 75 wounded.

In addition to using firearms to attack Palestinians, settlers and Israeli forces also torched hundreds of homes, buildings and cars in the West Bank, per OCHCR. Shamdasani said that settlers also reportedly established at least two new illegal outposts this week “near Palestinian communities which have been repeatedly attacked by settlers in the past months and are at imminent risk of being forcibly transferred from their homes and land.”