The war in the Gaza Strip rages on with unabated intensity and ferocity between Hamas and Israel.

In the West Bank, which is controlled by Fatah, Palestinians live in fear of the spread of the conflict and the “retaliation” of Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers for Hamas attacks.

“Israeli soldiers and settlers easily open fire to take revenge for what is happening in Gaza”complains Faraz Beitawi, in whose village, as everywhere in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians live in constant fear.

Clashes that broke out between Israel and Hamas on October 7 have killed more than 1,400 Israelis and more than 2,750 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Besides, at least 58 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,200 injured in the occupied West Bankan area full of Israeli checkpoints and Jewish settlements, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Settlers attack and kill Palestinian civilians

WARNING HARD IMAGES

In the Beta, the village of Faraz Beitawi, located near Nablus, a young man was killed on Sunday by the Israeli army. Video shows a soldier shooting at him from a distance.

On the same day a woman was killed by Israeli army bullets and her husband and son were injured while returning home.

In the Khusraanother village in the northern part of the West Bank, last week Jewish settlers killed four residents. The next day during their funeral the settlers killed a father and his son.

“We do not have a specific number of attacks by settlers or Israeli soldiers against Palestinians. The investigation teams could not go out into the streets because that is where the attacks and intimidation of the residents take place.”says Zeid al-Swaibi of the non-governmental organization al Haq.

The roads have always been a point of friction. Some are used exclusively by Jewish settlers, whose cars have yellow license plates, as in Israel.

It is not uncommon for settlers to stand on hills and throw stones at Palestinian cars, which are easily recognized as their license plates are white and green. Accordingly, Palestinians attack Jewish settlers.

But after the current conflict began “to attacks on cars” added “looting shops, threatening settler graffiti, murders, attempted attacks on countries”Swaibi continues, situations that bring to mind the looting of Hawara by settlers.

At the end of February, after the death of two settlers near Hawara, dozens of Jews attacked the village and set fire to several buildings and cars. The images of the burning village went around the world and caused a wave of indignation.

Terror and night patrols

This attack brought to the fore the situation in which they almost live three million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, next to almost half a million Jewish settlers. All of them these settlements are considered illegal by the UN under international law, although some of them were built with the permission of the Israeli authorities.

Yesterday Monday all shops remained closed in Hawara. “We are all afraid of the possibility of new settler attacks after the events in Gaza,” noted the city’s mayor, Moin Damidi.

In the village of Deir Jarir, near Ramallah, it is located next to an illegal settlement that has been created on the outskirts of the large settlement of Ofra. Every night the young people patrol there, explains 52-year-old Haidar Maho. “And there is a group that exchanges information and that informs each other about the movements of the settlers,” he adds.

At the same time, the Palestinian Prisoners Association announced that “about 470 Palestinians in the West Bank, mostly members of Hamas, have been placed in administrative detention.” This regime allows Israel to hold people without charge indefinitely.

“In the West Bank we have seen an arrest campaign of this magnitude for years,” assured Amani Saraneh, representative of the association.