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An Israeli soldier walks as masked Jewish settlers hurl stones during clashes with Palestinians. Photo by AP

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers on Thursday assaulted a 60-year-old Palestinian judge as he worked on his land near Ramallah, sparking violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces.

Judge Ahmad al-Zir sustained multiple injuries, including head wounds, and was left unconscious in the attack, a Ma'an reporter said.

He was taken to the Ramallah Governmental Hospital.

Residents of Silwad headed to the al-Asour area, where the attack happened, and confronted settlers, setting fire to caravans in a nearby outpost.

Israeli forces arrived and fired tear gas and plastic-coated bullets at the Palestinians. A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot in the chest and the arm with plastic-coated bullets, medics said.

The teenager was also taken to the Ramallah Governmental Hospital and is in a stable condition.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said forces fired riot dispersal means in response to clashes between Palestinians and Israeli civilians in the area of Silwad.

"The clash included rock throwing. Palestinians set fire to land that belonged to the Israeli civilians as well as to a caravan," she told Ma'an.

Several Palestinian groups announced they would hold Friday prayers at the outpost, which is built on lands belonging to Palestinians in Silwad and Deir Jarir.

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Settlers from the Netzah Binyamin outpost allegedly entered the Silwad village and began beating Palestinian with steel pipe, prompting villagers to storm outpost and burn down a shack.
By Chaim Levinson for Haaretz
| Apr.11, 2013 | 9:21 PM |

A violent confrontation broke out between Palestinians and Israeli settlers near the West Bank village of Silwad on Thursday afternoon, resulting in the hospitalization of a Palestinian suffering from serious injuries.

The events began when three settlers from the neighboring newly founded outpost of Netzah Binyamin, near the Efrat settlement, entered the village and began beating the Palestinian man with steel pipes, villagers said. The man was rushed to a Ramallah hospital for treatment. A Netzah Binyamin resident told Haaretz that the incident occurred when residents of Silwad ventured close to their outpost.

The Palestinians responded to the beating of their fellow townsmen by marching en masse into the outpost and burning down a shack. Palestinians from the town clashed with IDF soldiers near the outpost and on an access road to a nearby IDF base shortly after.

On Sunday, vandals defaced two mosques in the Palestinian town of Tekoa, near Bethlehem evidently in response to stone-throwing attacks that have been plaguing West Bank roads.

According to witnesses, a group of settlers entered the Palestinian community early in the morning and spray-painted the slogans "price tag" and "stone terror" on the mosques' walls. The graffiti further included the words "revenge for Adelle Biton," a reference to an infant who was wounded alongside her mother and two siblings in a stone-throwing incident near the settlement of Ariel last month.

There are some 300,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, which the international community condemns. Palestinians seek the West Bank, a hilly territory which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war, for part of their future state. A hardline minority of Jewish settlers frequently attack nearby Palestinian villagers and their property.