Settler rampage in West Bank sparks condemnations

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00:00Authorities say more than 633 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank

00:05since October 7th. The violence seems to be getting worse in recent months.

00:10Yeah, there's no question about it. It has surged since October 7th. It was bad enough before,

00:17but there's no doubt it is considerably increased, as has seizure of land and the

00:23pressure being put on Palestinian villages in the West Bank by Israeli settlers,

00:30taking various different forms, the sort of thing we saw in this town of Jit on Thursday,

00:38but also blocking of roads, blocking access to land, cutting down olive trees, destroying crops,

00:45insults, you know, all kinds of pressure. So over a thousand families have moved since the

00:51beginning of this year, have fled their homes effectively. And although we've heard the Israeli

00:57government and members of the Israeli government condemning what happened on Thursday, there's no

01:02doubt that for certain members of the government on the right, I'm thinking of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich

01:09in particular, the aim, although they may not publicly support this sort of violence, the aim

01:19is to move the Palestinians off the land and for Israel to seize the territory on the West Bank

01:26and make it a permanent part of Israel. So there is that apparent contradiction in what they're

01:32saying, but the reality is without any doubt at all, that it is to seize as much land as possible.

01:39And we've seen with the pace of the settlements increasing over the last year or so,

01:44that that is enjoying some success. There have been attempts by the Western world,

01:49by the United Nations, by the United States, by the European Union, by the United Kingdom,

01:54amongst others, to put pressure on Israel by imposing sanctions on the leaders of the settlers

02:00and on individual settlements as well. But as we can see from what's been happening over the last

02:05few days, it doesn't seem to be having very much effect. And we're on day two of ceasefire talks

02:11being held in Doha. Has there been any hopeful progress on that front? Well, not that we know of,

02:17but I mean, that's not, I suppose, not unusual. We probably won't hear of any progress that's made

02:23or has not been made until the talks are finally over. But we did hear from John Kirby,

02:29the national security spokesperson for the White House on Thursday evening, who said that there

02:35had been a promising start made, at least to the talks, and that the talks weren't really so much

02:42about the framework itself, which he said by and large had been agreed upon, but about the manner

02:47in which it should be implemented. That's probably a very optimistic spin on what is happening,

02:54because at the moment there doesn't seem to be very much give on either the part of Israel or

03:01of Hamas. Hamas accuses Israel of adding new demands to the agreement that was reached in May.

03:09Israel said that's not the case at all. Hamas is referring to the Philadelphia corridor,

03:15which is that strip of land which runs along the southern border of Gaza with Egypt. And also the

03:22return of the people from the north of Gaza freely, without obstruction, without checks by the Israeli

03:30armed forces as part of the agreement. Israel says that that's nothing new. But the reality is

03:37that Israel is imposing new demands, and Hamas too.

03:41All right. Our chief foreign editor Rob Parsons, thank you very much indeed for your analysis.

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