Settlers attack Palestinians, seize land around Nablus

Israeli settlers have set up several caravans on Palestinian-owned land in the village of Qusra to the south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian News Agency Wafa on Sunday. 

Ghassan Daghlas, a local Palestinian official in charge of monitoring Israeli settlement activity, told Wafa that a group of Israeli settlers from the illegal outpost settlement of Magdalim installed the caravans with the aim of expanding on Palestinian land.

Israeli settlers also attacked Palestinian-owned commercial structures and caused damages to a Palestinian vehicle at the entrance of the village of Burqa, northwest of Nablus on the same day, according to Daghlas.

The city of Nablus has become encircled by settlements and unofficial outposts in the last decade, leading to a ten-year peak in violence against Palestinians by settlers in 2021, according to the UN. 

Attacks take place across Areas A, B and C - with Palestinians living in Area C, under the control of Israeli Occupying Forces most at risk of violence and dispossession by new settlement projects. 

Israel has occupied the West Bank illegally since 1967, and commits various abuses against Palestinian civilians, human rights groups say.

More than 600,000 Jewish Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in constructions considered illegal under international law.

 Elsewhere in occupied Palestinian territories, Israel has on Sunday approved five new settlements in the eastern part of the Negev (also called Naqab in Arabic), amid mounting tensions between local Jewish and Palestinian Bedouin communities over land ownership, Israeli media reported on Sunday.