Israeli settler runs over Palestinian teen in West Bank

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA, citing local sources, reported that the four-year-old victim, identified as Joud al-Fakhori, was struck in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of al-Khalil on Friday evening.

The sources added that Joud was walking on a street in the area when the settler ran him over and fled the scene.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement that its paramedics transferred the child to Princess Alia Governmental Hospital for treatment.

Sources said the child sustained bruises and a fractured leg. The child’s condition was reported as stable.

There have been recurring “hit and run” incidents involving settlers targeting Palestinians in different parts of the occupied West Bank, with most of them largely going uninvestigated by Israeli authorities. Some of such events have even resulted in fatalities.

Earlier Friday, Israeli settlers shot dead a young Palestinian in a village near the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

The youth shot dead was identified by the Palestinian Health Ministry as 19-year-old Gesa Jamal Metan.

Meanwhile, the United Nations on Friday warned of a dramatic rise in Israeli settler attacks targeting Palestinians, their property and Muslim holy sites, stating that nearly 600 cases of such acts of vandalism have been recorded so far this year.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that it had registered 591 settler-related incidents in the occupied territory in the first six months of the current year, which resulted either in casualties, property damage, or both.

“That’s an average of 99 incidents every month, and a 39-percent increase compared with the monthly average of the whole of 2022, which is 71,” spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva.

And that comes after “the number of such incidents in 2022 was already the highest since we started recording them in 2006,” he said.

Last June, Miloon Kothari, a member of a Commission of Inquiry, mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, stated that the commission is “very disturbed that violent settler activity has considerably increased in the last months and it’s ... becoming, in fact, the means through which [Israeli] annexation is insured.”

He added, “As long as the occupation continues, the United Nations needs to continue to rigorously investigate the situation and, therefore, we would like to see a sunset of the Israeli occupation.”