The settlers' attacks against Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem represent an Israeli systematic policy, which allows harming the lives of residents and their properties, with the aim of increasing their suffering and pushing them to leave their city.
Recently, the city of Jerusalem has witnessed a remarkable escalation in the pace of settler violence and attacks on Jerusalemites and their Islamic and Christian holy sites, which varied between arrest and physical assault, destruction of property, and seizure of land.
Meanwhile, the occupation police continue to cover up settlers' crimes against Palestinians, without taking any deterrent punitive measures against perpetrators, which encourages them to commit more.
The expert in Jerusalem affairs, Nasser Al-Hidmi, has reported to Safa that settlers and settlements constitute one of the arms of the occupation authorities that implement their policies of displacing Jerusalemites and forcing them to leave the city by various means.
Al-Hidmi has explained that the displacement operations are carried out either through the means that the occupation has covered in a legal nature, through the enactment of racist laws that discriminate against Jerusalemites and violate their rights or through the criminal practices of settlers and their attacks on the population and threatening their lives.
"What constitutes a big danger to the lives of Palestinians in Jerusalem is that these attacks are carried out with protection from the occupation police, who are supposed to look after the law and maintain it, but turn a blind eye to violations by settlers," he added.
There are about 650,000 settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem settlements, living in 164 settlements and 124 outposts, according to official statistics.
"We have seen, on more than one occasion, the occupation police do not punish the settlers who commit the crime, but rather the investigation files against them are closed," he underlined, pointing out to the ongoing detention of Palestinians who are sentenced to high sentences.
Commenting on the settlers' attacks in Jerusalem, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said in a statement last Monday: "The occupying state exploits religious holidays to escalate attacks on citizens and their property."
It added, "On every Israeli occasion and celebration, we witness a number of attacks on Palestinians and their property, and every time more than one Israeli official comes out with a package of justifications to underestimate these attacks, using many pretexts to cover up the crimes of settlers."
The Ministry said that the continuous attacks against the citizens, their land, and property are organized terrorism committed under international silence and the failure of UN institutions of their legal and moral responsibilities towards these crimes.
As for the Israeli writer, Aviv Tatarsky, he said in a previous article: "The settlers enjoy the sympathy of officials in the settlements in which they reside, so there is reason to believe that they are aware of the violations they carry out."
"The occupation police claim that their mission is to protect settlers, even if they were uprooting trees of Palestinians," Tatarsky insisted.
He asserted that "while the police release Israeli settlers a few hours after any Palestinian report or complaint, Palestinians are arrested on the other hand on false charges of demolishing property and assault."
Source : Safa