AS JEWISH settlers and right-wing activists broke into an Israeli army base in the West Bank, international human rights groups were warning that Israel had stepped up unlawful home demolitions and settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
There were calls within Israel yesterday for militant settler groups to be classified as terrorist organisations after co-ordinated incidents against soldiers and army bases on Monday night.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu called the events intolerable and held emergency consultations with defence officials.
“We must deal with these rioters with a firm hand. We will not tolerate a situation in which Israel Defence Forces officers and soldiers are attacked and distracted from protecting Israeli citizens,” he said.
After rumours spread that the army was about to dismantle a number of illegal settler outposts, about 50 militant youths entered the regional Israel Defence Forces base near the West Bank town of Qalqilya, pushing aside the two soldiers on guard duty. Inside the base the settlers ran amok, slashing army vehicle tires, lighting fires and damaging property.
Elsewhere, some 300 settlers hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles before targeting the jeep of a senior West Bank officer. The officer was called a Nazi and lightly wounded after being hit by a rock.
In a third incident, settlers entered a closed military zone close to the border with Jordan and took over an abandoned structure next to a Christian baptism site. This group said they were protesting Jordanian efforts to prevent the construction of a permanent bridge for Jews and tourists to the Temple Mount holy site in Jerusalem’s old city.
Meanwhile, 20 international human rights and aid agencies warned the Middle East Quartet – comprising the US, UN, EU and Russia – that during the past year the Israeli government had stepped up unlawful home demolitions and settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, “pushing Palestinians to the brink” and “destroying prospects for a just and durable peace”.
Trócaire, Amnesty International, Oxfam International, Human Rights Watch and Medico International said: “Since the beginning of the year more than 500 Palestinian homes, wells, rainwater harvesting cisterns and other essential structures have been destroyed . . . displacing more than 1,000 Palestinians.”
They said this was more than double the number of people displaced over the same period in 2010 and the highest figure since 2005. “More than half of those displaced have been children for whom the loss of their home is particularly devastating,” they added.
In a statement issued ahead of a Jerusalem meeting of the quartet, the agencies said “plans for 4,000 new settler housing units have been approved for East Jerusalem over the past 12 months – the highest number since . . . 2006”, while in November Israel declared it would “speed up construction of 2,000” additional units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Expansion has been accompanied by a rise in violent attacks by settlers on Palestinians of more than “50 per cent compared to 2010 and by over 160 per cent compared to 2009”, said the agencies, quoting UN figures. This means settler violence has risen to the level of the peak year of 2005.