Israeli settlers cut electricity supply to Palestinian homes with chainsaws

Israeli settlers on Friday used chainsaws to cut wooden electric poles supplying power to Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank, according to a local official.

Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Palestinian news agency Wafa that a group of settlers used chainsaws to chop down six wooden electric poles in the town of Burin, south of Nablus.

The poles supply electricity to a house located on the outskirts of the town, which led to a power blackout in the area.

The targeted house is separated from the rest of Burin by a nearby settler-only bypass road, which runs to the illegal settlement of Yitzhar, where extreme right-wing Israeli settlers live.

Uptick in Israeli violence

United Nations’ human rights experts have previously raised alarm over a marked upsurge in settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territories, with assaults and property destruction occurring in "an atmosphere of impunity."

The Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that in the first three months of 2021, it had documented over 210 settler violent incidents, with one Palestinian fatality.

In 2020, it recorded 771 incidents of settler violence causing injury to 133 Palestinians and damaging 9,646 trees and 184 vehicles mostly in the areas of Hebron, Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah.

"We call upon the Israeli military and police to investigate and prosecute these violent acts with vigour and resolve," the experts said in a statement.

The attacks, according to the UN agency, were primarily designed to take over land but also to intimidate and terrorise Palestinians.

"They primarily target the livelihoods of rural Palestinians, vandalising livestock, agricultural lands, trees and homes. Besides the presence and expansion of Israeli settlements, which are intended to establish illegal claims for Israeli sovereignty, settler violence is meant to make the daily lives of Palestinians untenable," they said.

Israel has occupied the West Bank illegally since 1967, and commits various abuses against Palestinian civilians, human rights groups say.

More than 600,000 Jewish Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in constructions considered illegal under international law.