Masked settlers hurl rocks at Palestinians from the top of a hill in the West Bank village of Sinjil, July 4, 2025.<\/p>\n
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert\u00a0says settlers have been committing \u201cwar crimes\u201d against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank under the protection of the Tel Aviv regime.<\/strong><\/p>\n Speaking on Israel\u2019s Channel 13 on Saturday, Olmert said \u201chilltop youth\u201d or \u201cyouths of horror\u201d assault Palestinians, run off their lands and torch their homes, on a daily basis.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the West Bank, war crimes are occurring daily. Jews are murdering Palestinians. Burning them,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The Israeli police shut their eyes to the settler violence, while the military does not do what it is supposed to do.<\/p>\n However, the hosts of the show alleged that only a small minority of Israeli settlers attack Palestinians.<\/p>\n Olmert refuted the claim, saying, \u201cThis is not a minority, that\u2019s a false claim. They (the settlers) have backing, otherwise they wouldn\u2019t be able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n He further referred to the case of Sayfollah Musallet, a young Palestinian-American man who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the West Bank town of Sinjil on Friday.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in a column for\u00a0the Israeli daily\u00a0Haaretz, Olmert explicitly linked the actions of violent settlers to far-right ministers of the Israeli cabinet like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.<\/p>\n \u201cThese militias are not a gang of savages,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbut the vanguard of everyone who encourages and inspires them \u2013 and covers for them.\u201d<\/p>\n The ex-Israeli prime minister also noted that the main mission of violent settlers \u201cis to expel all the West Bank Palestinians by making life so miserable\u201d for them.<\/p>\n On Saturday, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry urged the international community to \u201cend double standards\u201d in addressing the suffering of Palestinians and take \u201cnecessary measures\u201d towards halting \u201cterrorist settler militia crimes in the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n It further underlined the need for holding \u201cillegal settler organizations accountable, prosecute them, and impose immediate sanctions on those who support and protect them politically and militarily.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel has ramped up West Bank violence\u00a0since October 7, 2023, when it launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n Since then, at least 998 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 others injured in attacks by the Israeli forces and settlers across the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.<\/p>\nPalestine urges global action against settler terrorism<\/strong><\/h2>\n