Days of Palestine – Bethlehem
A one-year-old Palestinian toddler was injured on Thursday night when Israeli settlers threw stones at a car he was in as it drove on a West Bank road, according to witnesses.
They said that settlers from the illegal Daniel settlement built on expropriated Palestinian land threw stones at Palestinian cars driving on a highway between Bethlehem and Hebron in the south of the West Bank.
The toddler, Mahmoud Iyad Banat, was injured in the eye from glass after stones hit and broke a window of a car he was in, said the witnesses.
Violence by settlers (and sometimes by other Israeli civilians) toward Palestinians has long since become part of daily life under occupation in the West Bank. These actions range from blocking roads, throwing stones at cars and houses, raiding villages and farmland, torching fields and olive groves, and damaging crops and property to physical assault, sometimes to the point of hurling Molotov cocktails or using live fire. Over the years, this widespread violence toward Palestinians has resulted in injuries to life and limb, as well as damage to property and land.
Under international law, "Israel" has a duty to protect Palestinians in the West Bank from this conduct. However, Israeli authorities routinely shirk this responsibility, even when the violent actions can be anticipated.
Thousands of testimonies, videos and reports, as well as many years of close monitoring by B’Tselem and other organizations, reveal that Israeli security forces not only allow settlers to harm Palestinians and their property as a matter of course – they often provide the perpetrators escort and back-up. In some cases, they even join in on the attack. In other instances, security forces have prevented anticipated harm by removing the targeted Palestinians, rather than the Israeli assailants.
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