Moment Israeli settlers attack deaf Palestinian man in the West Bank

Dozens of masked Israeli settlers viciously beat a deaf Palestinian man who was unable to hear their warning him not to approach.

67-year-old Palestinian Basim Saleh Yassin, who worked at a plant nursery in Deir Sharaf in the West Bank, could not hear the Israeli settlers’ warning him to leave after they attacked his coworkers.

Video captured Mr Yassin trying to flee as the settlers began to beat him with a stick and kick him.

The attack has left the elderly man hospitalised with multiple broken bones in his hand and injuries to his chest, back and face, witnesses said.

Israeli settlers also burned four vehicles which were parked at the plant nursery in the West Bank.

Although nominally governed by Palestinians, much of what is formally part of the West Bank is under Israeli control, with military checkpoints and segregated roads.

The Palestinian Authority controls just 17% of the West Bank, although this accounts for most of the area’s Palestinian population.

Israeli settlements, which break international law, have been set up in the West Bank, gradually encroaching on Palestinian territory and carving gaps between Palestinian cities, towns and villages.

Once opposed by Israel’s governments, the settlements received backing and military protection from the current administration of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Any peace agreement would likely require the removal of the 500,000 Israeli settlers from the West Bank, similar to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

Daniella Weiss, often referred to as the ‘godmother’ of Israel’s settler movement, is among several people sanctioned by the UK  over inciting or carrying out violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Weiss is the founder and leader of Nachala, a radical settler organisation, and a former mayor of Kedumim, an Israeli settlement located in the West Bank.

For more than 50 years, she has been prominent in the creation of illegal settlements on territory captured by Israel in the Middle East war in 1967.

Nachala’s ambition is for Israel to annex both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Weiss also believes that Lebanon, Jordan and parts of Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq are all part of Greater Israel.

The UK government described Weiss as a ‘high-profile extremist settler’ and said she is now subject to an asset freeze, travel ban, and director disqualification.

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