Middle East Monitor / December 15, 2022
Jewish settlers today vandalized a Palestinian school for boys with rocks and stones in the village of Urif, based south of Nablus, reported WAFA news agency.
According to Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors Jewish settlement activities in the Nablus district, more than 40 settlers made their way into the village and pelted the local secondary boys’ school with rocks, smashing the solar panels used to supply electricity to the school.
After checking the school administration’s surveillance cameras, he and members of the school staff were shocked to find settlers had come during the early morning hours to vandalize the school’s properties.
Settlers from a nearby illegal settlement outpost have recently made several such attacks, he added.
Ghassan also noted an increase in Israeli attacks against Palestinian homes and vehicles, particularly in the Nablus area.
These attacks come amid heightened Israeli military restrictions and the closure of several roads in the area by the Israeli occupation army, coupled with a noticeable increase in attacks by extremist settlers on vulnerable Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians accuse the Israeli authorities of aiding and abetting settler attacks as part of official efforts to intensify the number and size of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.
All settlements, outposts and settlers are illegal under international law.
Nevertheless, according to official data, around 650,000 Jewish settlers live in more than 130 Jewish settlements that have been built on Palestinian land since the occupation of the West Bank started in 1967.