Israeli settlers stabbed a Palestinian man to death on Tuesday evening in the northern occupied West Bank district of Salfit.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that 27-year-old Ali Harb from the Salfit-area town of Iskaka was pronounced dead Tuesday, after he was critically injured with a stab wound to the heart.
Local reports said that Harb, along with a number of Palestinians in the village of Iskaka, went to their land on the outskirts of their village on Tuesday after they received a call that a number of Israeli settlers from the nearby Ariel settlement were launching an attack on their land.
The settlers were reportedly attempting to set up a tent, in what seemed like an attempted takeover of the land – a common occurrence in rural Palestinian areas of the West Bank.
When Harb and his fellow villagers arrived on their land, they confronted the settlers and attempted to push them back, reports said. After the settlers briefly retreated from the area, they reportedly came back, accompanied by an armed settlement security guard and Israeli soldier.
Witnesses told Middle East Eye that the settlement security guard fired shots into the air as the group of settlers began assaulting the Palestinians, before one settler approached Harb and stabbed him directly in the heart.
MEE added that Israeli forces prevented the group of Palestinians from evacuating Harb for at least 30 minutes after he was injured, leading to his death.
Harb is the 67th Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces and settlers this year. Hundreds of mourners in Iskaka gathered on Wednesday for his funeral.
Israeli police said they were investigating the incident, but that “at this stage the identity of the stabber is unclear.”
According to Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, which documents settler violence in the West Bank, 92 percent of investigations into “ideological crimes against Palestinians” in the West Bank are closed without indictment.
Upwards of 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied Palestinian territory across 200 Jewish settlements in contravention of international law.
Settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is part of daily life for Palestinians living in areas close to the settlements. B’Tselem has documented at least 662 incidents of settler attacks on Palestinians since 2020, including close to 200 incidents of physical assault.
The group has also widely documented the correlation between state and settler violence, and the role that the Israeli military and Israeli authorities play in supervising and promoting settler violence against Palestinians.
These settlers – and in other cases too, seem to know absolutely nothing about Hitler and his methods.