Israeli settlers assaulted a group of European diplomats on Saturday and beat a visiting French mayor, according to witnesses and diplomats, in a further escalation of violence during the Palestinian olive harvest in the West Bank.
The mayor, 78-year-old Bernard Baudoux, said masked men shouted insults about France at him, kicked him and struck him with iron bars. He was in the West Bank helping Palestinian olive farmers alongside senior French and Belgian representatives in Jerusalem, as well as Polish diplomats. Baudoux, who runs the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, was seen collapsed beside a car after the assault, though he did not require hospital treatment.
Mayor blames government tolerance as officials respond
Speaking after the attack, Baudoux said he believed the settlers were acting with a degree of protection. “I think that if settlers are behaving like this, there is a tolerance on the part of the Israeli government,” he said.
He also urged the wider world to pay attention. “The whole world needs to know what’s happening,” he said, adding that those who suffer most are the people who live in the region.
Israel’s foreign ministry condemned the assault on the diplomats, and Israeli police said they would open an investigation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a different line. With an election only days away, in which he is trying to win back backing from the far right, he instead described the reports as a “smear” campaign against the settlers.
Netanyahu said the diplomats should have coordinated their movements with the Israeli military. He also pointed out that Baudoux is a communist who has long supported the Palestinian cause. His office issued a statement urging caution. “We urge caution before drawing conclusions,” it said.
Opposition leader accuses government of enabling violence
Netanyahu’s main rival in the October 27 election, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, strongly criticised the prime minister over the violence. He said it was “burning away the little legitimacy the State of Israel still possesses”.
Eisenkot went further, describing the attacks as “Jewish terrorism, under the auspices of the Israeli government”. Belgium, for its part, called for an end to what it termed “impunity for violent settlers” following the latest assault.
Baudoux had travelled to Taybeh, a Christian stronghold, with his local pastor from France to sign a goodwill agreement. He was attacked just as he joined the harvest as a symbolic gesture of solidarity, olives being an important cultural symbol for Palestinians.
Photographer beaten and harvest attacks continue
The assault on the French mayor came a day after settlers beat Heidi Levine, an American photographer working for The Washington Post. She was in moderate condition with broken vertebrae on Saturday. Netanyahu had questioned the circumstances of her beating on Friday, suggesting that Palestinians and “far-left” activists may have caused the trouble.
President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, phoned Levine in hospital on Saturday. He described the attack as “outrageous and shocking” and said it weighed on his conscience.
Bashar Fawadleh, a priest in Taybeh, said settlers had already attacked the harvest and taken olives before turning on the mayor. “One person was hit in the head and needed stitches. They also beat up an older lady in her 70s after insulting her with very bad words,” the pastor told reporters.
Extremist Israelis have called for the Palestinian harvest to be halted, amid months of rising attacks in which settlers have seized land and property. Violence has also hit Israelis, with a Palestinian shooting dead a settler last month. Earlier this month, settlers beat an AFP photographer, Jaafar Ashtiyeh, while he was covering tensions over the harvest, fracturing several of his ribs.
Gantz, the head of an umbrella settler group, blamed recent incidents on “groups of provocateurs and terrorists”, while acknowledging that some Israelis had harmed the settlers’ cause. Britain has led economic sanctions over the violence, which Netanyahu has condemned. Netanyahu’s government has also accelerated approval of West Bank settlements, which are illegal under international law. About 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank alongside three million Palestinians, in territory Israel seized in 1967.
