Israeli settlers step up attacks on Palestinian farms, expanding West Bank outposts
ZANUTA, West Bank — Nadav Weiman pulls up in an SUV to the small Palestinian sheepherding community of Zanuta, high in the West Bank's South Hebron Hills. The small grouping of stone houses and newly built school was once home to 250 people and thousands of sheep. The community now lies abandoned.
The villagers fled at the end of November, chased away by violent Israeli settlers living in outposts that Israel hasn't authorized, according to groups documenting violence in the West Bank.
Weiman was an Israeli special forces soldier between 2005 and 2008 and served all over the West Bank. Today he's deputy director of Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli army veterans that advocates to end Israel's military occupation of the territory.
About 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations' human rights office. Israel has promoted the settlements, which much of the international community condemns as a violation of international law. But settlers are trying to expand those settlements by building a network of smaller outposts, without Israeli government approval, and eating into more Palestinian land. The U.N. human rights office says there are now more than 160 unauthorized outposts in the region. Violent settlers and unauthorized outposts are a growing source of tension between Israel and the United States.
Weiman says settlers have stepped up attacks on Palestinian communities while the world's attention has been focused on the war in Gaza triggered
