Several masked radical Israeli settlers attacked a delegation of diplomats from France, Belgium and Poland this Saturday in the West Bank, breaking the windows of the Belgian consular car and injuring the mayor of the French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, Bernard Baudoux. A video captures how hooded young people demand from the other side of the window that the passengers of a vehicle show them their identification documents, despite lacking legal authority. There were at least seven of them, some of them with sticks and quads that illustrate the growing institutional support. The settlers threw stones and threw Baudoux to the ground, while the army (capable of arriving in minutes when there are Palestinian attacks) took hours to arrive, according to the newspaper Haaretz.
The attack occurred near Taybeh, a Palestinian town near Ramallah on which settlers and soldiers have been tightening the siege. The delegation consisted of two high-level delegations from France and Belgium, formed, among others, by both consuls general in Jerusalem, and their partners. There were also representatives of the Polish diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv.
The Belgian Foreign Minister, Maxime Prévot, has condemned the attack “in the strongest terms”, before emphasizing that “Palestinians face this violence every day” and that he “will continue to press” for the EU to “sanction those responsible and those who support them”. In a statement, Prévot demands an end to “impunity for violent settlers” by Benjamin Netanyahu's government, which he links to the policy of settlement expansion and “attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians from their land.”
The incident occurs a day after another attack with foreigners injured - this one by dozens of violent settlers - within the framework of the olive harvest season. One of them was Heidi Levine, a 63-year-old American photographer for The Washington Post newspaper, beaten to the ground with the bulletproof vest that identified her as a press member and operated on her hand this Saturday at the Ramallah hospital where she is admitted.
“Picking olives, giving news or carrying out diplomatic work should never put anyone at risk,” said the head of Belgian diplomacy. The attacks (close to 200) related to olive harvesting that have caused personal or material damage already exceed those of the entire last olive season, despite having started on Thursday, according to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs.
Netanyahu's office, which faces the examination of the polls in ten days, has issued a defensive message, in which it asks "not to reach conclusions" about the "alleged attack" and tries to discredit the attacked mayor by pointing out that he is a communist and that he put a Palestinian flag in City Hall. “This information comes amid concern about a coordinated campaign to defame Israel and the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria,” he says, using the biblical, and official in Israel, name for the West Bank.
The Israeli army has “strongly condemned” the incident in Taybeh, but justifies not having responded when it received the notification at a telephone number that is not intended for notifications made by civilians.
The attack has also been directed against Palestinians who work their olive trees. At noon, the settlers came to steal what they had collected since dawn and made a hole in the head of a young man.
Aware of the different international repercussion of the last two cases compared to those that only leave Palestinian victims, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, has telephoned the attacked photographer, according to a statement issued by his office as soon as the sabbatical ended. Herzog “strongly condemns this outrageous and shocking violence,” both in Abu Falah and Taybeh, which has “weighed deeply on his conscience” during the Sabbath. “I express my deep regret and apologize for what you have had to experience,” he adds.
