Palestine seeks UN monitors’ deployment in West Bank amid settler violence

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has called for deploying UN monitors in the occupied West Bank.

Monday’s call came after two Palestinians were killed on Saturday by an Israeli settler who rammed his car into them in the city of Nablus.

“We call on the United Nations teams stationed in Palestine to deploy monitors on the roads and in the areas targeted by settlers,” Shtayyeh said during a Cabinet meeting in Ramallah city.

“The UN has more than 400 vehicles and more than 1,000 staff that can be trained as UN monitors to observe and document the actions of the army and settlers for the purpose of prosecution,” he added.

According to Palestinian estimates, at least 169 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank in 2022.

UN figures also show that Israeli settlers carried out 793 attacks against Palestinians and their property this year, 582 of which caused damage and 211 resulted in injuries.

“Armed and masked Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians in their homes, attacking children on their way to school, destroying property and burning olive groves, and terrorising entire communities with complete impunity,” UN experts said last week. 

The UN also said that 2022 is the sixth consecutive year of the annual increase of settler attacks in the occupied West Bank. 

“Disturbing evidence of Israeli forces frequently facilitating, supporting and participating in settler attacks, makes it difficult to discern between Israeli settler and State violence,” said UN experts Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Morris Tiball-Binz, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and Clement Voule, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association. 

“The impunity of one is reinforced by the impunity of the other.”