Israel declares victory in Nablus, but where it has assassinated armed resistance members it has failed to eliminate resistance.

Huwwara has been under near constant attack since Thursday afternoon, when groups of armed settlers began attacking several points in the town, primarily on the main road, vandalizing dozens of storefronts and vehicles. The settlers also burned olive trees, and attacked several homes, a local amusement park, and cafe on the outskirts of the town.

“What’s happening right now in Huwwara is terrifying, and it’s a sign of what’s to come in the rest of the West Bank as the settlers continue their violent rampages on Palestinian towns like ours,” Salamah Saleem, a local activist, told Mondoweiss.

To me Hafez’s story is the embodiment of Israeli apartheid, and the themes I’ve covered for so many years reporting on the ground in occupied Palestine. It’s a story of violence, injustice, inequity, and a yearning for freedom in a place where oppression reigns supreme. 

Mohammad Huraini was with his father, Hafez, when he was attacked by Israeli settlers as he attempted to work his land. Now, as Hafez sits in an Israeli prison, Mohammad writes about what happened that day and what it means for the ongoing struggle in Masafar Yatta. “Every day, we face this injustice and apartheid not only from the settlers, soldiers, or police, but from the entire system that uses violence to hurt us, steal our land and imprison us,” he writes. “We cannot stay silent, and we must let the world know what is happening.”

While he was working on his land, a group of Israeli settlers armed with sticks, metal pipes, and M16s attacked Hafez Huraini and his son Muhammad. Hafez was badly injured, and both of his arms were broken. When a Palestinian ambulance arrived to evacuate him, the settlers slashed the tires, but the Israeli soldiers arrested Huraini, claiming he had hurt one of the settlers.

Several Palestinians were injured and 63-year-old Ghadeer Fuqaha Masalmeh was killed on Friday, as a wave of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians and their homes has swept across the occupied West Bank. Masalmeh is the third Palestinian to be killed in the West Bank over the past week. 2021 has seen a staggering rise in settler violence, with UN OCHA reporting at least 450 settler attacks against Palestinians and their property as of December 6th.

A wave of settler violence spread across the occupied West Bank in the early hours of Friday morning, severely injuring several Palestinians and causing damage to their property, in a series of “revenge” attacks following the killing of an Israeli settler. 

In a new report, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem detailed the harrowing tale of a Palestinian teenager who was kidnapped and tortured by a group of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank this summer. The youth was burned, beaten, and handed over to Israeli soldiers unconscious.

Palestinians in the village of Burin were just sitting down to end their daily Ramadan fast when they noticed smoke rising on the outskirts of the eastern part of the village. As the evening unfolded they were forced to watch as the night sky lit up their village with orange flames and clouds of smoke. By the time the settlers and soldiers retreated, and the residents were able to put out the fires, the damage had already been done. “That land was planted with hundreds of olive trees, many of them were more than 70 years old,” Walid Saeed, 70, a local farmer in Burin, tells Mondoweiss. “There is no way to describe how we feel in Burin after what happened. This land, these trees, they are our whole lives, our heart and soul. They mean everything to us.”

Bilal Bawatneh, Azzam Amer, and Khaled Nofal are the latest Palestinian victims in a spate of settler violence that has rocked the occupied West Bank in recent weeks, with new accounts of settler attacks on Palestinian civilians being reported in Palestinian and Israeli media nearly every day.