Israeli forces detain 65-year-old Palestinian woman in West Bank over alleged stabbing attack

A Palestinian woman was arrested by Israeli forces on Saturday after allegedly stabbing an Israeli settler near the Ibrahimi mosque in the southern occupied West Bank and wounding him slightly.

The woman was not identified but Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that she was 65 years old from the Hebron district town of Idna.

The woman was beaten by Israeli forces, which caused her to faint, and was later detained without allowing an ambulance to reach and treat her, Wafa reported.

The wounded Israeli settler was a 38-year-old from the nearby illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba.

Israel seized the West Bank in the Six-Day War of 1967. Since then nearly 700,000 Jewish Israelis have moved into West Bank and east Jerusalem settlements that much of the international community regard as illegal.

Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank with some 200,000 Palestinian residents, also has some 1,000 Jewish settlers living there under heavy protection from the Israeli army.

Last month, an Israeli rights group said that Israeli forces do not usually intervene to protect Palestinians being attacked by Israeli settlers.

B'tselem  said it documented a total of 451 settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank since early last year.

"Settler attacks against Palestinians are a strategy employed by the Israeli apartheid regime, which seeks to advance and complete its misappropriation of more and more Palestinian land," the group said.