When 24-year-old Salam Zaghal stabbed settler Evyatar Borowski to death on April 30 at the Za’tara checkpoint — the entrance to the northern West Bank and a site of settler bus stops — the reaction was swift and vehement. Jewish settlers from Yitzhar, considered one of the most extremist settlements, blocked roads and descended on nearby Palestinian villages. Palestinian schoolbuses crossing through the checkpoint were pelted with rocks, village lands and olive groves were set on fire and the city of Nablus was under lockdown for the day as the Israeli army closed off Za’tara.
Villages surrounding Nablus, among them Asira al-Qibliya, Burin, Qusra and Urif, regularly suffer attacks from settlers, but the majority of their complaints are ignored by Israeli authorities. In a February 2012 report by European Union missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah, settler violence increased threefold between 2009 and 2012, from 132 attacks to 411. That the same year, the Palestine Liberation Organization also released a report on settler violence, noting that since 2007, attacks by Jewish settlers in the West Bank have increased by 315%. Palestinian farmers, who bear the brunt of the economic losses from settler attacks on their property, are discouraged from filing complaints with Israeli authorities, which they recognize as working to the benefit of Jewish citizens. In fact, only 11 % of all cases — about 350 from 2000 to 2011 — were prosecuted, according to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem.
