Former senior Israeli military and security officials have denounced Israeli occupier violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, with some calling it \u201cethnic cleansing,\u201d The New York Times reported Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply,\u201d retired Brig. Gen. Ephraim Sneh, who is also a former Israeli health minister, said of attacks on Palestinians, according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n
Maj. Gen. Eyal Ben-Reuven, a former commander of Israel\u2019s ground forces who also commanded a division in the West Bank, said occupier violence posed a greater concern to him than other security fronts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis, what the settlers are doing here, is the real threat to Israel,\u201d Ben-Reuven said. \u201cThis is more concerning to me than Iran, Gaza or Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments came as retired Israeli generals and former senior officials have been touring Palestinian communities in the West Bank to examine the impact of occupier violence, including attacks on farmers and shepherds and the destruction of property.<\/p>\n
Palestinian residents told the visiting officials they had lost access to their homes, farmland and grazing areas amid repeated attacks.<\/p>\n
In the West Bank village of Burin, limping Palestinian farmer Bashar Eid said an occupier attack had left him permanently impaired and that repeated attacks prevented him from farming his land.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what to do,\u201d Eid said. \u201cThey want to take my house.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Jordan Valley, repeated attacks forced Palestinian families to leave the largely Bedouin encampments like Hamamat al-Maleh, according to the Times.<\/p>\n
Only a few families remained when the Times visited in February after nighttime incursions forced most residents to flee, it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t even sleep an hour,\u201d resident Mohammad Khalil, 37, said. \u201cIf they come and you\u2019re asleep, you won\u2019t survive it.\u201d<\/p>\n
By March, Khalil and the remaining families had also left following a series of raids, thefts and attacks, the newspaper reported.<\/p>\n
In another Jordan Valley community, a Palestinian farmer said an occupier outpost and fencing had cut his family off from farmland and grazing areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cSix months ago, this was our land,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, it\u2019s like a jail.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 200 prominent Israelis signed a letter in June demanding an end to attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, according to the Times.<\/p>\n
The signatories included two former prime ministers, more than 30 retired army and air force generals and former heads of Israel\u2019s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. Former officials, rabbis and other public figures also signed.<\/p>\n
They called for an end to what they described as \u201cJewish terrorism\u201d and \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
The signatories also accused the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of pursuing \u201ca deliberate government policy in which the entire security establishment \u2014 including the military, Shin Bet and the police \u2014 is knowingly complicit.\u201d<\/p>\n
They pointed to government funding for illegal Israeli settlement outposts and farms and demanded an accounting of public funds used to provide infrastructure and other support for them.<\/p>\n
They also accused Israeli soldiers of sometimes standing by during attacks on Palestinians or participating alongside occupiers in assaults on Palestinian communities.<\/p>\n
Moshe Ya\u2019alon, a former Israeli army chief of staff and defense minister under Netanyahu, criticized extremist occupier ideology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is Jewish supremacy?\u201d Ya\u2019alon said in remarks cited by the newspaper. \u201cEighty years after the Holocaust, \u2018Mein Kampf\u2019 in reverse. The master race is us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asaf Agmon, a retired Israeli Air Force general who joined one of the tours, said efforts to remove Palestinians from parts of the West Bank reminded him of what Jews endured under Nazi rule. He stressed that he was not comparing the scale of the violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce a society behaves this way,\u201d he said, \u201cthat society is doomed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israeli occupiers have carried out thousands of attacks in the West Bank since October 2023, injuring thousands of Palestinians, according to UN figures cited by the Times.<\/p>\n
According to UN figures cited by the Times, Israeli occupiers have carried out thousands of attacks in the West Bank since October 2023, injuring thousands of Palestinians.<\/p>\n
More than 3,200 Palestinians have been displaced by occupier attacks so far this year, twice the rate recorded last year, while the average number of Palestinians injured in such attacks has risen from one every three days in 2020 to more than three per day in 2026, the report said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former senior Israeli military and security officials have denounced Israeli occupier violence against Palestinians in the occupied West…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-601977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}