A 75-year-old Palestinian man from the village of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank died on Monday, after succumbing to wounds he sustained when he was run over during an Israeli police raid last week. 

Israeli settler violence in the West Bank isn’t an isolated incident. Rather, nearly every week settlers from nearby agricultural outposts terrorize the Palestinians of Masafer Yatta as they take over their land. “Settler violence is only part of Israeli colonist goals,” Ali Awad, a Palestinian activist, tells Mondoweiss. “These people are used as tools — justified by racist laws — for committing ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.”

B’Tselem researcher Nasr Nawaja’a tells Mondoweiss that intimidation from Israeli settlers and the Shin Bet has increased since a video he recorded showing the arrest of Palestinian children made international headlines. In fact, just a few days after the video of the boys’ detention was published, Nawaja’a says he was summoned for interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, and was warned to “not make any more trouble for the army.”

On Wednesday, Israeli forces arrested five Palestinian children, ranging between the ages of 8 and 13, in the South Hebron Hills as they picked the seasonal wild flowers to bring back home to their families. Eyewitnesses say the children were first attacked by Israeli settlers, and then detained by Israeli soldiers at the settlers’ demand. “This was obviously an attempt by the settlers to intimidate the boys by using the soldiers,” eyewitness Basel Adrah tells Mondoweiss. “They didn’t steal or damage anything. All they were doing was picking akoub. Is this a crime?”