Church leaders, diplomats, condemn the violence of Israeli settlers in the West Bank | News from the occupied West Bank

The main church leaders and diplomats called on Israeli settlers to be held responsible during a city visit to the Christian predominance of Taybeh in an occupied West Bank, after the colonists have intensified attacks against the region in recent weeks.

Representatives of more than 20 countries, including the United Kingdom, Russia, China, Japan, Jordan and the European Union, were among the delegates who visited the village in the West Bank on Monday.

Speaking in Taybeh, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Théophilos III and the Latin patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa denounced an incident last week when settlers lit fires near the community church.

They said the Israeli authorities had not answered emergency calls to the Palestinian community.

In a separate declaration, the patriarchs and chiefs of Jerusalem demanded an investigation into the incident and asked that the colonists be held responsible by the Israeli authorities, “who facilitate and allow their presence around Taybeh”.

Church leaders also said that the settlers had brought their cattle to graze on Palestinian lands in the region, set fire in several houses last month and set a sign by reading “there is no future for you here”.

Nida Ibrahim of Al Jazeera, reporting from Doha, said that Church leaders called this “systemic and targeted attack” against Christians.

“About 50,000 of them live in the occupied West Bank, a small but very proud minority,” said Ibrahim. “They also consider themselves under attack, not only because they are Christians but because they are Palestinians.”

The Church has been trying for years to “strengthen the constancy of the Christian community in Palestine,” said Ibrahim.

“We have seen how Israeli settlers pushed them out of their land, out of their house.”

The colonists, which are often armed, are supported by soldiers of the Israeli army and regularly put attacks against the Palestinians, their lands and their property. Several rights defense groups have documented repeated cases where Israeli settlers in the Cisjordanie Ransack of Palestinian districts and cities, houses and vehicles on fire.

The aggressions have increased in scale and intensity since the brutal war of Israel against Gaza began in October 2023. These assaults also include large -scale incursions by Israeli forces in the Palestinian cities and cities of the West Bank who killed hundreds of Palestinians and tens of thousands of people.

Pizzaballa, the best Catholic clerk in Jerusalem, said that he thought that the West Bank became an area without law.

“The only law [in the West Bank] is that of power, of those who have the strength, not the law. We have to work for the law to return to this part of the country, so that anyone can appeal to the law to enforce their rights, “Pizzaballa told journalists.

He and Theophilos prayed together at the church of St George, whose religious site dates back centuries, adjacent to the region where the colonists ignited the fires.

The visit comes as the Palestinians report a new wave of settlers’ violence.

On Monday, the Israeli settlers and soldiers launched several other attacks across the West Bank, notably in Bethlehem, where the colonists uprooted hundreds of olive trees in the village of Al-Maniya, south-east of the city, and the Israeli authorities have demine a four-story residential building.

Al-Maniya’s village chief Zayeda Kawazba told WAFA news agency that a group of settlers had stormed Al-Qarn in the center of Al-Maniya, installed four tents and uprooted about 1,500 olive saplings belonging to families in the Al-Motawer and Jabarin clans.

One day earlier, hundreds went down to the village of Al-Mazraa Ash-Sharqiya, south of Taybeh, for the funeral of two young men killed during a colonist attack on Friday.

The occupied West Bank is home to more than three million Palestinians who live under a severe Israeli military regime, the Palestinian authority governing in limited areas separated from each other by a myriad of Israeli control points.

Israel has so far built more than 100 colonies through the West Bank, which house around 500,000 settlers who live on private Palestinian land.