Acts of violence committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank reached a record number in 2023.
More than 48,000 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque during the past year 2023, according to the Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem.
An official in the Endowments Department told Anadolu Agency that 3,086 settlers stormed the mosque last December.
The raids increase significantly during the Jewish holidays.
Israel unilaterally allowed settlers’ incursions into the mosque in 2003, despite the protests of the Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem and its demands to stop them.
For its part, the Wadi Hilweh Information Center (a human rights activist) said in a report, a copy of which was obtained by Anadolu, that the Israeli authorities issued 1,105 deportation decisions during the year 2023.
He added: Among the deportation decisions were 568 deportation decisions from the Old City, 412 deportation decisions from Al-Aqsa Mosque, and 29 deportation decisions from the city of Jerusalem.
He stated that he monitored 209 demolition operations in Jerusalem, including all towns and neighborhoods in the city, including 68 operations that took place since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip on the seventh of last October.
The Center monitored 3,261 arrests in the city of Jerusalem during 2023, including 53 children, including 643 boys and 165 girls.
He noted that 987 arrests were recorded from October 7 until the end of the year.
He pointed out that he had monitored the killing of 21 Palestinian residents of the city by Israeli army gunfire during the year 2023. He noted that 14 of them had been killed by the Israeli army since the seventh of last October.
Record violence
Acts of violence committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank reached a record number in 2023 and resulted in the deaths of at least 10 people, according to the Israeli non-governmental human rights organization Yesh Din.
The organization said in a statement that “settler violence is the policy of the Israeli government,” noting that the number of incidents, their severity, “the number of Israelis involved, and the outcome” of violence reached record numbers in 2023, especially since October 7.
Yesh Din reported that the past two months “were the most violent,” recording 242 violent incidents.
Dozens of Palestinian homes and vehicles were damaged by settlers in 2023, according to this organization, which has been counting these acts of violence since 2006.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded 1,225 settler attacks on Palestinians in 2023.
Among these attacks, Yesh Din mentioned two particularly violent incidents committed by “a large number of Israeli settlers,” the first in Huwwara in February and the second in Turmus Ayya in June, two Palestinian towns located between Nablus and Ramallah.
The organization explained that “hundreds of Israelis attacked Palestinian towns and set fire to dozens of homes and vehicles.”
In the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, 490,000 settlers live among 3 million Palestinians. These settlements are illegal under international law.
Yesh Din expressed its doubts about the latest data published by the Israeli police, which indicate that this violence decreased in 2023 compared to 2022.
The organization explains this by saying that the police are only counting the number of complaints submitted, which are declining due to the lack of confidence of Palestinians in the Israeli authorities.
Source : Tel Aviv Tribune + Agencies + French + Anatolia Agency
