Israel charges settlers with ‘terror’ for attacking Palestinians

OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: An Israeli court on Thursday charged two Jewish settlers with “committing an act of terror” for attacking Palestinians in a village of the occupied West Bank this month, officials said.

The rare indictment, normally reserved for Palestinians, came after a group of settlers attacked a Palestinian family in their car in Huwara, where eight days earlier two Israeli settlers had been shot dead amid a surge in violence in the Palestinian territory.

The fatal February 26 shootings sparked a rampage by dozens of Israeli settlers who set homes and cars ablaze in Huwara, with Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich saying he thought the village should be “wiped out” in remarks he later retracted.

According to the indictment filed at Israel´s central district court, the two young men were among a group of eight to 10 settlers who on March 6, during the Jewish holiday Purim, drove to the parking lot of a supermarket in Huwara. A Palestinian couple and their toddler daughter remained in their car as one of settlers who was charged threw stones at the vehicle and the other used the axe to break its windows and attack the father.

The father suffered wounds to his shoulder and arm while the attackers doused the car with pepper spray and the other accused vandalised two other cars parked nearby. The family eventually managed to drive away as the settlers hurled rocks at them, wounding the father in the head.