One specific incident has raised special anxiety amid growing accusations of an upsurge in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian inhabitants of the occupied West Bank.
According to Mohamad Mattar, a squad of Israeli forces and settlers dressed in military clothes abducted him and two other Palestinians in the West Bank five days after the terrorist assault by Hamas on October 7.
Source : NBC NEWS
The Palestinian Authority
which controls portions of the West Bank, employs Mattar, 46, as a social and humanitarian worker. Mattar told NBC News that he and his colleagues were brought to a sheep barn close to their hamlet of Wadi al-Seeq, which is east of Ramallah. He said that they were photographed, chained, stripped down to their underwear, and peed on there.
Mattar went on to say that one of the unnamed assailants attempted to rape him with a stick. When he retaliated, the Israeli guy beat him for ten minutes, breaking the stick in three parts.
Mattar stated of one of his attackers, “He was telling me that he is going to kill me, he is going to make my kids hungry.” “He forced me to roll over all the manure while dousing me in cold water.” Then he continued to abuse me.
According to the United Nations, human rights organizations, and locals, Israeli security forces and radical settlers have been threatening, abusing, and murdering Palestinians in the West Bank. This eyewitness testimony is part of a rising problem in the region. The U.N. claims that the hard-right coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been supplying assault firearms to the settlers, enabling them to murder and harass people without consequence.
In response to a question from NBC News on the Mattar incident, the Israel Defense Forces released a statement stating that they had received reports about “a number of suspicious individuals.”
The IDF reported that the suspects were found to be carrying an ax and a knife when they were detained and searched by the soldiers. Mattar said he wasn’t planning to harm anybody with the kitchen knife he had in his vehicle. In the last several years, Palestinians have attacked with knives, stabbing Israeli security personnel and civilians at checkpoints and other public locations.
The IDF also said that it has launched an inquiry and fired the commander of the unit that made the arrest because “the manner in which the arrest was carried out, and the conduct of the force in the field, was contrary to the standards expected of soldiers and commanders in the IDF.”
Before October 7, there was an issue with Israeli settlers attacking Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank. However, according to the United Nations and Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, the Hamas slaughter and the Israeli bombing of Gaza that followed provided cover for Israeli authorities and settlers to step up their attacks.
The situation has undoubtedly become worse over the last two weeks, according to B’Tselem spokesman Dror Sadot. “The settlers are taking advantage of the fact that no one is looking at them because of the war.”
Israel disputes this assertion, claiming that the majority of recent Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank were caused by counterterrorism initiatives meant to eliminate supporters of Hamas and other violent organizations. However, it does not refute the occurrence that Mattar related.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, more than 2,000 Palestinians have been detained in the month after the Hamas assault in the West Bank and East Jerusalem from their homes, at checkpoints, and during other interactions. According to data from B’Tselem, there are over 5,000 Palestinians detained in Israeli jails on “security grounds,” including about 150 children.
In general, the figures provided by Israeli officials have been less. The IDF claimed to have “apprehended 1,200 suspects” on Thursday, claiming that 742 of them were Hamas members. When NBC News reached out to the IDF on Saturday, they were unable to get an update in time for publication.
The United Nations reports that in the last four weeks, security forces and settlers in the West Bank have murdered at least 132 Palestinians, including 41 children. According to U.N. figures, there were 158 Palestinian deaths there last year and 199 before October 7 of this year, marking the greatest level of violence in the West Bank in 20 years.
According to Mattar, the termination of a commanding officer is insufficient retribution for the ordeal his group endured. He compared the treatment to that of captives at Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi jail where American soldiers physically and sexually abused them during the US-led invasion of that nation in 2003. Mattar desires the officer’s incarceration.
He said that he was “against Hamas” and “against the war between us” as his assailant “was beating me.”
Mattar went on, “But the attacker was unyielding, saying, ‘You are all Arabs, all s—, not just Hamas.'” We want to have you killed and banished from this place.Â
Mattar said, “Their insults are a part of their sadism.” “Arabs are seen by some settlers as a lower class in society.”
He cautioned that Israel may suffer consequences from the enslavement of Palestinians in the West Bank, a notion President Joe Biden hinted at when he said last week that settler violence was “pouring gasoline” on regional tensions. According to Mattar, such approach increases the likelihood of another violent cycle in a place where conflicts appear destined to erupt again.
He compared the pressure they are putting on us to a balloon that would eventually burst. “There will be an explosion in the West Bank and Jerusalem if this oppression continues and as people grow accustomed to the attacks on Gaza.”
