Israeli settlers attack US convoy in West Bank

Israeli settlers on Friday hurled rocks at a convoy carrying U.S. consulate personnel near the West Bank settlement outpost of Adei Ad, which led to a confrontation between U.S. security personnel and Jewish settlers, the Israeli media has reported.

The U.S. consulate convoy had come to the Adei Ad outpost to look into complaints that Israeli settlers on Thursday had destroyed Palestinian-owned olive groves, Israel’s Haaretz news website reported on Friday.

The convoy reportedly included Palestinian residents of the village of Turmus Ayya, according to Ynet, another Israeli news outlet.

“According to both Palestinian and settler sources, American security guards drew their weapons on the settlers,” Ynet reported.

No injuries were reported from the incident.

Israeli news website The Jerusalem Post said that Israeli Radio had reported that the trip’s purpose was to show the Americans “the adverse effects of Israeli settlement policy on the local population.”

The convoy, it added, “did not coordinate its trip with Israeli military authorities.”

Tension has mounted in the occupied Palestinian territories since the kidnap and murder of three Israeli settlers last summer and the subsequent abduction and murder by Jewish settlers of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy.

Both incidents preceded a devastating Israeli military onslaught on the Gaza Strip in July and August that left over 2,160 Palestinians dead – the vast majority of them civilians – and some 11,000 injured.

Tensions in Jerusalem have escalated even further since late October, when Israel briefly closed occupied East Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound after an extremist rabbi was shot and injured by a Palestinian man in West Jerusalem.