RAMALLAH, (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Israeli settlers continued their organized attacks on Palestinian towns and properties on Thursday. A group of settlers stormed a church in Ramallah with a herd of cattle and chased shepherds in Al-Khalil (Hebron).
In the central occupied West Bank, settlers stormed the Church of Al-Khadr in the town of Taybeh, east of Ramallah, marking the third violation of the church’s sanctity in just one week.
Local residents reported that settlers, accompanied by a herd of around 80 cows, entered the church premises, infuriating the inhabitants due to the sacredness and historical significance of the site.
About a month ago, settlers established a new outpost on lands inhabited by a predominantly Christian population. Since then, they have launched attacks that included burning areas surrounding the historic church, as well as agricultural lands and fields belonging to the town’s residents.
In a statement, the town’s municipality said, “The Church of Al-Khadr is one of the oldest historical churches in the region and carries immense religious and historical symbolism for the people of Taybeh and Christians throughout Palestine. However, its antiquity and sanctity did not protect it from being a target of settler assaults, who continue their provocations and attempts to impose a settler reality through force and racism.”
The statement added, “Bringing animals into the church is not only an infringement on religious property but a deliberate insult to believers and a desecration of their sacred symbols.”
The municipality called on the international community and global church authorities to “act immediately to protect holy sites from these racist practices that violate human values before anything else.”
In the southern West Bank, settlers on Thursday chased Palestinian shepherds and attempted to steal their livestock in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Al-Khalil.
Media activist Osama Makhamra said that armed settlers pursued shepherds out of grazing areas in Khirbet al-Fakheet, tried to steal their livestock, and drove hundreds of animals into fruit-bearing trees surrounding residential homes in Khirbet al-Qawaweis.
He added that through settler pastoralism, settlers are trying to completely take over grazing lands and water wells, preventing Palestinians from accessing them in Masafer Yatta, with the aim of forcibly displacing the local population to allow for colonial expansion.
Recent settler assaults have also targeted several Bedouin families near Taybeh, as part of a years-long pattern of attacks. Over the past two years, repeated terrorist settler raids have forcibly displaced approximately 25 Palestinian Bedouin villages in the eastern West Bank.
Behind these attacks is the settler organization “Hilltop Youth,” which recruits hundreds of extremist settlers and is responsible for increasingly violent assaults reaching deeper into the West Bank. The latest of these was a violent rampage on the towns of Kafr Malik, Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, and Sinjil northeast of Ramallah, which resulted in the killing of four Palestinians — including martyr Saif Muslat, an American citizen who was brutally beaten to death in Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya.
Since the beginning of this year, UN data has recorded 757 settler attacks resulting in casualties or property damage, a 13% increase compared to the same period in 2024.
According to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, settler attacks during June took on an organized nature, with settlers developing new methods for igniting fires to burn vast areas of Palestinian agricultural land and properties. The commission confirmed that not a single day passed in that month without at least one settler assault, with attacks concentrated in eastern Ramallah and Masafer Yatta in Al-Khalil.
