The European Union has condemned Israeli settler attacks on EU diplomats and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, amid unprecedented settler pogroms during the Palestinian olive harvest. Saturday’s incident is the latest in weeks of intensifying pogroms against local communities in the occupied West Bank by Israelis from illegal settlements who are largely protected – or at least unrestricted – by Israeli forces. On Friday, Israeli settlers also attacked Palestinian olive pickers and a veteran photojournalist.
Why have settler pogroms surged during olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank? Belgium’s Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said the country’s consul general to the Palestinians, as well as French and Polish diplomats and Catholic representatives, were also among those attacked. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called on the Israeli government to arrest the settlers who assaulted Bernard Baudoux, the mayor of Aulnoye-Aymeries, and said on X it must “urgently put an end to this criminal violence and ensure the safety of the civilian population”.
The assault has prompted an Israeli police investigation, as settler pogroms disrupt the Palestinian harvest across the occupied territory. United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration is “very disturbed” by the images of the settler attack on American photojournalist Heidi Levine, 64, who works as a freelance photojournalist for The Washington Post, in the occupied West Bank on Friday. Speaking to reporters at the Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, Rubio said he was yet to receive an official briefing on Friday’s incident, but what he saw “didn’t look good”.
He urged Israel to “crack down” on the violence and said President Donald Trump does not want to see “friction” or “a crisis” in the West Bank. Ahmed Najar, a Palestinian political analyst and playwright, told Al Jazeera that condemnation without consequences is not accountability. But this violence flourishes within a wider system of occupation, settlement expansion and impunity,” he said.
Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff, former EU representative to the occupied West Bank and Gaza, had a similar view. At the last Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on October 12, the EU ministers were still unable to decide on sanctioning the violent settlers and/or its enablers, the annexationist apartheid government of PM Netanyahu,” he added. On Saturday, Israeli settlers attacked vehicles belonging to diplomats from France, Belgium and Poland near the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank.
At least seven masked settlers surrounded the vehicles, demanded identification documents, smashed the window of a vehicle belonging to the Belgian consulate and assaulted the French mayor, according to witnesses and media reports. The 78-year-old told the news agency that he was “a bit shaken” by the event. Well, that was not enough, and I was attacked, violently attacked, protected by the people who were there to try and limit things,” Baudoux said.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
