Violence against Palestinians and Israeli soldiers by extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank is on the rise, local daily Ha'aretz on Thursday quoted an Israeli military commander as saying.
"There has been a rise in Jewish violence in Judea and Samaria," said Major General Gadi Shamni, head of the Central Command of Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is responsible for the entire West Bank, using the biblical name for the Palestinian territory.
"In the past, only a few dozen individuals took part in such activity, but today that number has grown into the hundreds. That's a very significant change. These hundreds are engaged in conspiratorial actions against Palestinians and the security forces," he added, stressing that "it's a very grave phenomenon."
Last month, a mob of Jewish settlers shot and wounded several Palestinians during a rampage through two West Bank villages after a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli boy in a settlement.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has sharply criticized the incident and vowed that Israel would not tolerate such "pogroms" in the occupied territories.
Among the attacks against their fellow citizens in recent weeks,Jewish settlers let a dog loose on an IDF reserves company commander, broke the hand of a deputy battalion commander and punctured the tires of a reserve soldier's car, according to the newspaper.
"What this bunch does is causing tremendous damage, both to the image of the IDF and the state of Israel. This is harming our ability to carry out security missions in the territories," Shamni was quoted as saying, adding that the extremists have been receiving encouragement from the settler leadership, rabbis and the public.
However, the commander noted that the West Bank now is a "relatively secure" area. "The majority of people here act normally. There is friction (with Palestinians), but the feeling of the Jewish population overall is excellent."
The settlement issue is one of the main obstacles in the sluggish Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Olmert said earlier this week that Israel would have to give up nearly all of the West Bank in order to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, yet many settlers have vowed to resist withdrawal.
Source:Xinhua
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