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Photos:
Israeli soldiers throw a sound grenade to disperse Palestinian farmers, preventing them from picking olives in their fields, in the village of Burqa, east of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on October 20, 2024. [JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images] Published by Middle East Monitor (MEMO) 10/20/2024

Picture showing settlers during an attack on a Palestinian family in the West Bank in December. Those photographed are not connected to the events described in the article below. Published by Haaretz 2/7/2025
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The settler was charged with several counts of terror-motivated aggravated assault 'driven by racism against Arabs.' According to Yesh Din data, 94 percent of nationalist crimes by Jews against Palestinians in the West Bank are closed without charges

by Hagar Shezaf for Haaretz
Feb 7, 2025

Israel's state prosecutor filed an indictment against an Israeli settler on Thursday for firing 18 bullets at a Palestinian family harvesting olives near a West Bank settlement outpost

Shmuel Zafran, 30, from the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, was charged with several counts of terror-motivated aggravated assault "driven by racism against Arabs." Two Palestinians were wounded in the shooting.

The indictment stated that on October 29, 2024, the Palestinian family went to harvest olives in a grove located near both the Palestinian village of Immatain and the settlement outpost of Havat Gilad. When Zafran and two residents of the outpost, Yaniv Amram and Yitzhak Giat, spotted the family, they decided to go over and drive them away.

To do so, the indictment said, Zafran returned home, changed into his army uniform – even though he wasn't on active reserve duty at the time – and got his rifle.

When they reached the grove, the three men got out of the car and approached the family on foot. When they were 15 or 20 meters away, Zafran fired in the air several times and shouted at them to leave. As a result, the indictment said, the family was startled and began fleeing, while screaming at Zafran to stop shooting.

Nevertheless, Zafran continued to shoot indiscriminately in their direction, and as a result, one person was wounded. But he continued shooting, including at the people trying to evacuate the wounded man. As a result, another man was wounded.

The prosecution asked the Central District Court in Lod to keep Zafran in jail until the end of his trial. The "severity, nature and character of his actions and the fact that they were carried out in a blaze of nationalist fervor" create reasonable grounds for fearing that he would pose a danger to other Palestinians and the public in general if he were released, it said.

Over the past 20 years, most cases of nationalist crimes by Jews against Palestinians in the West Bank have been closed without charges, according to data collected by the Yesh Din organization from 2005 through to 2024.

The organization checked 1,701 investigations of such crimes by the police's West Bank district, though this is not the full number committed. It found that 94 percent were closed without charges, while only 3 percent produced full or partial convictions.

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