Jewish extremists attack Palestinian family, vandalize construction site

Three Palestinians were injured on Saturday by both Jewish extremists and the IDF during separate incidents in the South Hebron Hills and the Samaria region, Israeli left-wing NGOs reported.

B’Tselem charged that about 10 Jewish extremists, believed to be settlers, threw stones at a Palestinian family with eight children and hit them with batons while they were on their farmland in the West Bank near the Mitzpe Yair outpost in the South Hebron Hills.

The NGO provided video footage of the incident recorded by the mother of the family. Both she and her husband were injured in the attack and they were treated at a hospital in Hebron.

The family’s vehicle was also vandalized.

B’Tselem noted that the family was from the West Bank village of Um Lasafa, which is also home to the five Palestinian boys detained last week by Israeli police after they entered the yard of a settler’s home in the Givat Maon outpost. That incident is under investigation.

The spokesman for the South Hebron Hills Regional Council said the video did not show enough details to understand the full chain of events and that the people seen in it were not from Mitzpe Yair.

“Our path is not one of violence and force,” the spokesman said.

He noted, however, that there had been an increase in Palestinian violence, vandalism, theft and burglary in recent months.

Separately, in the Samaria region, Jewish extremists thew stones at Palestinians on the outskirts of the town of Burin, according to the NGO Yesh Din.

It charged that settlers who came from the direction of the Givat Ronen outpost vandalized a construction site for a new home and that they threw stones.

Palestinians threw stones in response, Yesh Din reported, adding that afterwards more settlers and four soldiers arrived and further stone throwing ensued.

Neither the IDF or the Police gave their response to the incidents.