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AMMAN — The Foreign Ministry on Sunday “strongly “condemned ongoing settler attacks against Palestinians, most recently targeting several villages and towns in the northern West Bank, holding Israel, as the occupying power, responsible.
In a statement, the ministry spokesperson, Fuad Majali, reiterated Jordan’s rejection of the attacks and the escalating violence by extremist settlers against the Palestinian people, warning that continued violations and restrictions in the occupied territory risk further escalation and threaten regional security and stability.
He urged the international community to assume its legal and moral responsibilities and compel Israel to halt the dangerous escalation and settler violence.
He also stressed the need to fulfil the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, primarily their right to and independent, sovereign state of their own on the June 4, 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The spokesperson also said that the two-state solution remains the only path to achieving a just and comprehensive peace.
Palestinian residents said Sunday that Israeli settlers torched buildings and cars in attacks on several villages in the occupied West Bank, with Israel's army condemning "violence of any kind" after the fact.
The reported arson late Saturday came in the midst of a spate of killings of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank since the start of the Middle East war, according to AFP.
AFP journalists saw the charred remains of a house and several vehicles in the village of Fandaqumiya, southwest of Jenin. In the village of Jalud, a medical centre had been torched and Hebrew graffiti daubed on the mosque.
Hassan Al Zoubi, whose home in Fandaqumiya was destroyed, told AFP that some 200 assailants had come from the nearby settlement of Homesh.
"They set the house on fire right before our eyes using Molotov cocktails, throwing them through the windows," Zoubi said.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said several Palestinians were injured in the attacks.
'Settler terror'
Since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran, six Palestinians have been shot dead in settler attacks in the West Bank, according to a tally of data from the Ramallah-based health ministry.
The Palestinian presidency condemned the recent "terrorist attacks carried out by Israeli colonist gangs" in the West Bank.
"These assaults constitute a serious escalation for which the Israeli occupation government bears full responsibility," it said.
Diplomats from 13 European nations and Canada on Saturday decried "increasing settler terror", and said the violent attempts to seize Palestinian land "must end".
Alongside roughly three million Palestinians, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.
Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has risen sharply since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.
According to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 1,050 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war.
Official Israeli figures say 45 Israelis have also been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations.
