Palestinian Authority deploys security forces to prevent settler assault in West Bank

The security forces of the Palestinian Authority have been deployed in the vicinity of a town in the north-central West Bank, in an extremely unusual operation, to prevent an assault by a group of Israeli settlers.

The Palestinian National Security Forces are currently stationed on the outskirts of Salfit, at whose southern entrance a group of several settlers who were about to enter the town had gathered, as local sources have explained to the Palestinian agency Maan.

The settlers have withdrawn but security forces remain deployed in the vicinity to prevent their return.

Settler incursions into the occupied territory of the West Bank are a common historical phenomenon but have multiplied since the outbreak of the offensive against Gaza in 2023. This summer, settlers have attacked Palestinian farmers practically every day when they tried to harvest olives, one of the pillars of the battered Palestinian economy.

As one of the latest examples of this violence, the Israeli authorities arrested five Israelis this Thursday suspected of participating in an assault against the West Bank town of Sair, an event that would have left an eight-month-old Palestinian baby injured.

The United Nations recently stated that more than a thousand Palestinians have died in the West Bank at the hands of soldiers or radical settlers since October 7, 2023, the date of the attacks launched against Israel by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other Palestinian factions, although in the nine months prior to 7-O the highest number of Palestinian deaths in the West Bank had been recorded since the Second Intifada, two decades earlier.