clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

Israel settlers call for ‘death to Arabs’ on violent spree

April 20, 2018 at 3:35 pm

Israeli settlers vandalised Palestinian cars with racist terms in Jerusalem on 5 June 2017 [Jpost

Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank woke up this morning to hostile threats following a spree of violence by Israeli settlers calling for “death to Arabs” and for the expulsion of Palestinians from their land.

The Israeli squatters went on a rampage last night in the district of Ramallah, slashing tyres, inciting violence and spraying racist graffiti on walls during “Remembrance Day”, when Israel commemorates its fallen ahead Nakba Day.

Residents of the town of Burqa, east of Ramallah, had the tyres on their car slashed; over 40 cars are said to have been damaged by the illegal settlers. Israeli sources reported that CCTV camera footage from the scene showed men in dark clothes, their faces hidden, puncture the tyres of a truck.

The vandalism follows a spree of violence which began earlier in the week. On Wednesday, Israeli settlers cut down more than two dozen olive trees and spray-painted walls in the Palestinian village of Urif outside of Nablus with the words “Death to Arabs”.

Read: Israel threatens to bomb Gaza ‘just to reassure settlers’

According to the Time of Israel photos from the scene showed one wall spray-painted with the biblical phrase “The stranger who approaches will be put to death”. A nearby rock was painted with another biblical phrase, “You shall drive them out”, which relates to the conquest of the land of Israel.

The previous day, car tyres were deflated and messages were sprayed including “Expel or kill”. A week ago Israeli vandals torched a mosque in the Aqraba village in eastern Nablus. It was reported that two masked figures wearing backpacks entering the Sheikh Saadeh mosque in western Aqraba at 2am local time set fire to the mosque.

Palestinian activists and rights groups say that the spree of violence has been encouraged by Israeli officials because of the “culture of impunity” within the country towards settlers who incite attacks against Palestinians.