Israeli forces kill Palestinian in Nablus raid as settlers assault olive pickers 

Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in Nablus on Sunday before dragging his body through the streets, while settlers assaulted olive pickers elsewhere in the occupied West Bank.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 42-year-old Majed Mohammad Dawoud was killed during a raid on al-Ain refugee camp in Nablus in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Witnesses said Dawoud was left bleeding in the street as Israeli forces prevented medical teams from treating him.

Ghassan Hamdan, director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Nablus, said Israeli soldiers stripped Dawoud of his clothes and dragged his body along the road as he bled to death.

Medical crews were later able to retrieve his body and transfer it to Rafidia hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The Israeli military had stormed the camp in the early morning, opening fire and carrying out assaults and arrests of residents.

The assault was part of a wide-scale raid-and-arrest campaign carried out across the West Bank on Sunday morning, involving home searches and assaults on civilians.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society reported that between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, Israeli forces arrested at least 20 Palestinians, including three children.

 

 

 

 

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Meanwhile, armed Israeli settlers, accompanied by soldiers, attacked Palestinian farmers during the annual olive harvest season in several parts of the West Bank.

Multiple attacks were reported in the town of Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah, where settlers targeted Palestinian farmers and international volunteers assisting with the harvest.

Video footage of the attack showed masked settlers beating a Palestinian woman and a foreign volunteer with batons.

Settlers also set fire to four vehicles, destroying them completely, and stole the harvested olive crop, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.

Eyewitnesses told Wafa that the settlers arrived early, clearly prepared to launch an attack.

One settler was seen brandishing a firearm and threatening to shoot if Palestinians attempted to reach their land.

Additional attacks on olive pickers were reported in villages and towns near Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem.

Palestinian farmland is frequently targeted by settlers and Israeli forces during the olive harvest, which takes place annually in October. These attacks aim to prevent farmers from accessing their land and result in significant financial losses.

Since 7 October 2023, Israeli settlers have carried out 7,154 attacks against Palestinians and their property, killing 33 people and damaging or uprooting 48,728 trees - including 37,237 olive trees - according to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission.

In total, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since 7 October 2023, according to the United Nations.

At least 213 of those killed were children, 20 were women, and seven were people with disabilities.

The UN says that this number represents 43 percent of all Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank over the past 20 years.