Residents beat Palestinian who entered settlement

An unarmed Palestinian man who attempted to enter a home in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar was severely beaten Monday by a group of local residents, before IDF soldiers reached the scene and managed to protect him from further harm.

The man, who according to Palestinian reports suffers from a mental disability, began fleeing the settlement after a woman noticed him climbing through an apartment window and alerted her neighbor, Haaretz reported. The neighbor caught the Palestinian a short while later and transferred the man to the settlement’s security coordinator.

At that point, several local men arrived at the site where the Palestinian was being held and cuffed his hands. They then began hitting him, according to Haaretz, until IDF troops from a nearby base arrived and dispersed the violent crowd.

In a video recording of the incident uploaded to YouTube by the ultra-right wing HaKol HaYehudi website, a Yitzhar security official refers to the Palestinian as a “terrorist” and adds that he believes the man had entered the settlement in the past.

He goes on to call the Palestinian “insane,” in an apparent reference to the man’s mental disability, and says no weapons were found in the man’s possession. Throughout the video, the Palestinian can also be heard crying while being punched and kicked.

According to Haaretz, the Palestinian had, in fact, been arrested by the IDF in the past for entering the settlement, but was released in light of his health condition.

No fence surrounds the settlement of Yitzhar, which lies on the outskirts of Nablus, and the nearest Palestinian village, Urif, is only several minutes walking distance away.

Adiv Sterman contributed to this report.