Combatants for Peace: Violent incident near Yianon, in the district of Nablus ›

photo: IAPI

We hereby join in the press release issued by Combatants for Peace, concerning a very serious incident that occurred on land of the village of Yanun : Yesterday afternoon 35 settlers attacked Palestinian farmers on the land of the village of Yanun, at a time when the army was present and did not prevent the farmers from being harmed.

The settlers went down to the fields from the unauthorized outpost 777, attacked the farmers while they were harvesting and injured five of them. At least one is badly injured.  Army forces dispersed the Palestinian farmers with tear gas. In addition, Palestinians reported that settlers knifed to death four sheep and set fire to their fields in several places.

Moreover, the army prevented entry to vehicles of the Red Cross who arrived to evacuate the wounded. Having no choice, the farmers evacuated one of the wounded on the back of a donkey until – after a long time – the army evacuated the wounded to the hospital in Nablus.

Even after the Palestinians had been ejected from their fields, the local settlers, under army protection, continued to set fire to the fields. Photo:IAPI

The land of the farmers of the village of Akraba was declared by the army a closed area after the army had failed to deal with the settlers’ violence against the Palestinians there (as you can read in the article of Amira Hass, who patrolled with our activists in the area last week).

As a result of the intervention of Fighters for Peace and Rabbis for Human Rights, the farmers received permission to go to their land for seven days only, to harvest the wheat and the promised us that they would protect the farmers.

The response of the spokesman for the Judea and Samaria army unit, Barak Raz, as posted on Twitter:  “I know that security forces acted to end the conflict and that a Palestinian and a settler were injured.  The injured were treated by the army medical service and the Palestinian was evacuated to a hospital for further treatment.” (Quote)

(Thanks to Combatants for Peace for allowing us to publish this press release on our website)