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February 16th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
A Palestinian man was killed in a car-ramming attack on Friday as he was hiking with friends in the northern Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.
Fifty-two year-old Bilal Bawatneh, along with a group of Palestinians from around the West Bank, were hiking on Friday morning on a trail between the Ein al-Beida and Bardala villages in the northern Jordan Valley, east of Tubas city.
Known for its sprawling mountains, which bloom and flourish in the winter time, the Jordan Valley attracts many hikers and visitors from across Palestine during this time of year.
The rural nature of the Jordan Valley has also attracted thousands of Israeli settlers in recent decades, who live in illegal settlements and outposts
Official Palestinian Authority (PA) news agency, Wafa, quoted the group of hikers saying that “they were shocked” to see a vehicle veer off its course and speed towards the group. The vehicle hit the group of hikers, injuring Bawatneh and two others.
Bawatneh, a resident of the Ramallah-area town of al-Bireh, was evacuated by medics from the Palestinian Red Crescent, who said in a statement that Bawatneh succumbed to his injuries shortly after.
Israeli medics reportedly evacuated the other two injured Palestinians to a hospital in the city of Afula. The nature of their condition remained unknown.
Photos of Bawatneh that were reportedly taken on the hike moments before he was killed flooded social media on Friday, as Palestinians mourned his death as the latest victim of the Israeli occupation.
PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi tweeted about Bawatneh’s killing, saying “tragically, vehicular murder is an all-too-familiar form of unaccountable Israeli settler assaults on vulnerable Palestinians in the West Bank.”
The killing of Bawatneh received little attention from Israeli media, despite being the third account of settler-related murders of Palestinians in the West Bank in the last week.
On Wednesday, Azzam Amer, a Palestinian man from the Nablus-area village of Kafr Qalil was was killed after he was reportedly rammed by an Israeli settler who was driving near the Kifl Hares junction in the northern occupied West Bank.
Palestinian media described Amer as a husband and father; he was also reportedly a day laborer, and was returning home from work when he was killed. The International Middle East media Center (IMEMC) reported that Israeli police said they opened an investigation “to determine whether the incident was a traffic accident or a deliberate attack.”
In cases of Israelis being killed or injured by Palestinian drivers, Israeli authorities are often quick to classify such incidents as deliberate attacks, or as “terrorist attacks,” and typically give little leeway when it comes to determining if it was potentially just a traffic incident.
In those cases, Palestinian drivers are either shot on site and their bodies detained (i.e. Ahmed Erekat), or they are arrested and imprisoned on terrorism charges.
On February 5th, a Palestinian accountant and father of a five-year-old boy, 34-year-old Khaled Nofal, was shot and killed by an Israeli settler near the village of Ras Karkar, northwest of the city of Ramallah.
Nofal’s case was widely covered by Israeli media, evidently due to the fact that Nofal was characterized by the settler responsible for his death and the Israeli military as a “terrorist” who was allegedly attempting to “infiltrate” a settler outpost on the outskirts of their village and commit an attack — though no one, except Nofal, was hurt in the incident.
The Times of Israel and Haaretz noted that no weapons were found on Nofal’s body or around the scene, calling into question what Nofal was actually doing there at the time and how intended to carry out an attack without any weapons.
While Nofal’s family told Haaretz that they weren’t sure what he was doing so close to the outpost in the middle of the night, the mayor of Ras Karkar told the Times of Israel that the Nofal family owned land close to the area — a potential reason for his being there.
Nevertheless, due to the incident being classified as an “attempted terror attack,” no criminal investigation into the settler has been launched by the Israeli military, the Times of Israel reported.
Eitan Ze’ev, the settler who shot and killed Nofal, has a history of shooting unarmed Palestinians, Israeli media reported, and is currently on trial for aggravated assault after he shot two Palestinians during a confrontation last summer on the outskirts of Biddya, a village West of Salfit in the northern West Bank.
Ze’ev’s firearm was reportedly confiscated after he shot the two Palestinian men in July — though some security officials argued it should be returned to him — leading to more speculation about how Ze’ev camed to be armed prior to killing Nofal.
After the July shooting, Ze’ev received “certificate of appreciation” from Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, who said at the time: “We’re giving thanks to dear people who protected the lives of others and of themselves in the face of barbaric, murderous rioters who tried to lynch Jews in Samaria.”
While Nofal has been characterized as a “terrorist” and “infiltrator” by Israeli military officials, who used the sole testimony of the settlers who shot Nofal as evidence against him, army officials have called Ze’ev “a quiet, ethical and moral man.”
An uptick in violence
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.
Though settler violence against Palestinians is an everyday reality of life in the West Bank, rights groups have noticed a significant uptick in violence since the beginning of the year, which they say can be traced back to the death of 16-year-old settler Ahuvia Sandak, who died during an Israeli police chase on December 21, 2020.
Since then, settlers in the West Bank have championed Sandak as a martyr of their cause, staging protests against Israeli police and wreaking havoc on Palestinian communities across the West Bank, causing serious damage and harm to Palestinians and their property.
According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, in the five weeks between December 21, 2020 to January 24, 2021, the group documented 49 incidents of settler violence in the West Bank– this is in comparison to a total of 108 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the last six months of 2020.
The group documented 28 cases of physical assault, 19 cases of stone throwing at Palestinian vehicles, three shootings, and six instances of vandalism of Palestinian property, damaged crops and attacked homes.
Of the 49 instances recorded by B’Tselem, the group said 15 Palestinians were hit by stones, including four children, all under the age of 15, one as young as five years-old.
B’Tselem noted that in at least 26 of the cases documented since Sandak’s death, Israeli security forces were present when the settlers were conducting attacks against Palestinians.
“Instead of arresting the assailants, in five cases they attacked the Palestinians, firing rubber-coated metal bullets or tear gas canisters at them and injuring two. In the remaining 21 cases, the forces did not do enough to prevent the attacks,” the group said.
In the weeks following January 24th, the end date of B’Tselem’s report, dozens of new cases of settler violence have been reported in the West Bank, with at least 18 cases of settler attacks on Palestinians, their property, and their livestock reported by the Wafa news agency between January 25th – February 15th — not including the killings of Batawneh, Amer, and Nofal.
The nature of the attacks included physical assaults on Palestinian men and women, the uprooting of dozens of olive trees, vandalism of a church, stone throwing at Palestinian buses and private vehicles, among other things.
‘Devastating’ long term effects
While there has been a clear uptick in violence since the death of Ahuvia Sandak, B’Tselem said that addressing the teen’s death “as the cause of the settlers’ rage is detached from reality.”
Rather, settler violence is a routine, the group said, adding that “for years, settlers have been committing acts of violence against Palestinians with full backing by the state, which does nothing to prevent the recurrence of these attacks.”
“This is precisely what a Jewish supremacist regime looks like,” the group said.
Israeli rights group Yesh Din says that Israeli authorities routinely fail to investigate hate crimes and settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, and rarely hold the perpetrators accountable for their crimes.
According to the group, 82% of the investigations opened into “ideological crimes” against Palestinians are closed due to police failure, and only 8% of investigations into such crimes actually led to the filing of indictments.
In addition, Israeli settlers who commit crimes against Palestinians and their property, if charged with their crimes, are tried in Israeli civilian courts. Meanwhile, Palestinians (including children) who are accused of committing crimes against Israeli settlers and security personnel are tried in Israeli military courts, which boast a conviction rate of over 99 percent against Palestinians.
Hani Nassar, a field researcher for Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) who documents settler attacks that target Palestinian children, told Mondoweiss that such systems are “evidence of the apartheid system in the West Bank”, and the Israeli government’s support and complacency with “settler terrorism.”
“Settler terrorism is not just about attacking our land, homes, and trees,they also deliberately target people and their children,” Nassar said, adding that while the short term effects of settler attacks can be devastating both financially and physically, the long term effects can be even more brutal.
“I have witnessed and documented the long term effects these attacks have on Palestinian families, especially children,” Nassar said, adding that many children and their parents “struggle to cope with their trauma.”
When kids are attacked in cars, for example, Nassar said those children will often show signs of PTSD in the form of not wanting to travel in vehicles, especially at night (when most attacks occur). In the cases of children who are attacked in their homes, many will show signs of trouble sleeping, wetting the bed, nightmares, etc.
“The international community might read the news and see these attacks and say ‘oh that is sad’, but I would tell those people: come here, visit these families who have been attacked, and see what the settlers and the occupation have done to them,” Nassar said. “Maybe then people will want to make a change.”
“The situation in real life is much more dangerous than you can imagine when you read the news,” he said. “We need all governments, including the Palestinian government, to step up and do everything they can to defend these families. Fulfill your responsibilities and go to international court and charge the Israeli leaders who sponsor this terrorism against us.”
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