TURMUS AYYA, West Bank (AP) – The olive harvest that was marked by violence is complete in the West Bank, but fear still hangs over many Palestinian villages, where residents keep constant watch for armed Israeli settlers.
In recent months, the community of Turmus Ayya has endured near-daily incursions by settlers, residents say, including one in which a Palestinian grandmother was beaten unconscious with a spiky club.
The fear extends across the Palestinian territory. During last month’s harvest, settlers launched an average of eight attacks daily, the most since the United Nations began collecting data in 2006. The attackers burned cars, desecrated mosques, ransacked industrial plants and destroyed cropland. Israeli authorities have done little to curb the violence beyond issuing occasional condemnations of it.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the attackers as a minority that did not represent most settlers in the West Bank. But their continued expansion of outposts – conducted in public with seemingly few legal repercussions – and the violence have cemented a fearful status quo for their Palestinian neighbors.
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