Palestinian Authority deploys security forces to prevent settler attacks in West Bank

MADRID, December 26 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Palestinian Authority security forces were deployed near a town in the north-central West Bank in a highly unusual operation to prevent an attack by a group of Israeli settlers.

The Palestinian National Security Forces are currently stationed on the outskirts of Salfit, at the southern entrance of which a group of several settlers had gathered who were preparing to enter the city, as local sources explained to the Palestinian agency Maan.

The settlers have withdrawn but security forces remain deployed nearby to prevent their return.

Settler incursions into the occupied West Bank are a common historical phenomenon but have increased since the offensive against Gaza began in 2023. This summer, settlers attacked Palestinian farmers virtually every day as they attempted to harvest olives, one of the pillars of the battered Palestinian economy.

One of the latest examples of this violence is the arrest on Thursday by Israeli authorities of five Israelis suspected of having participated in an attack on the town of Sair in the West Bank, an event which allegedly injured an eight-month-old Palestinian baby.

The United Nations recently said that more than a thousand Palestinians have died in the West Bank at the hands of soldiers or radical settlers since October 7, 2023, the date of attacks launched against Israel by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other Palestinian factions, although in the nine months preceding 7-O, the highest number of Palestinian deaths was recorded in the West Bank since the Second Intifada, two decades earlier.