Israeli settlers threaten Bedouins in Jordan Valley

Israeli settlers raided a Bedouin community in the Khallat Hamad area of the northern Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank and threatened local Palestinians on Sunday, a day after a herd of sheep belonging to one of the community’s residents was attacked.

Local activist Muataz Bisharat, who monitors settlement-related activities in the Jordan Valley, told Ma’an on Sunday that a group of 12 settlers came to the community’s tents and demanded that residents leave the area.

Read: Israel’s Knesset speaker, settlers storm Al-Aqsa

Locals also told the Palestinian state-run Wafa news agency that settlers had threatened to “harm them” on Saturday evening if they attempted to take their sheep to pasture in the area.

Settlers also killed one sheep and injured two others after they attacked a herd belonging to Mahmoud Awwad on Friday, Wafa reported.

Last week, Israeli settlers and soldiers attacked Palestinian shepherds whose herds were grazing near an illegal Israeli settler outpost in the northern Jordan Valley.

Read: Israel storms PA office in Hebron

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there were a total of 221 reported settler attacks against Palestinians and their properties in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem in 2015, and 107 in 2016.

The majority of settler attacks committed against Palestinians are met with impunity, with Israelis rarely facing consequences for such attacks.