Masked Israeli settlers attacked and injured a Palestinian woman and members of an NBC News team reporting in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Saturday.
Four members of an NBC team were interviewing Aida Ahmed Abdullah and her family in the Palestinian town of Jalud, near Nablus. Abdullah said they had been driven out of their home by Israeli settlers, and the team was walking down the hill toward the house.
A gray car with Israeli license plates then drove in reverse up the hill toward them, video of the incident shows.
A masked man in a blue tracksuit, holding a stick, was leaning out of the rear passenger window as the vehicle approached. When the car stopped, at least four men in dark clothes with their faces covered leapt out, hitting Abdullah and the crew with sticks and throwing rocks at them.
“They jumped out, beat us, then jumped back in the car,” said NBC News international correspondent Matt Bradley, who was hit twice in the arm and later treated at a nearby clinic.
Abdullah, 51, who was on the ground after the attack, was taken for medical care by the Red Crescent. Her injuries were not life-threatening, according to an Israeli military and Israel Border Police statement. According to her husband, Mahmoud Toubasi, Abdullah’s condition had improved but she remained in the hospital Saturday night.
Three additional members of the NBC News team — a cameraman, producer and driver — were also injured and were treated following the attack.
Producer Lawahez Jabari described how the car rushed up the hill before its occupants beat members of the team and damaged camera equipment and one of the crew’s vehicles.
“Suddenly a car came to us,” she said after receiving medical care. “The settlers had sticks, I saw a gun, but they didn’t use the gun.”
Camera operator Khaldoon Eid, who lives in the West Bank, said he was surprised the attack occurred in the middle of the village.
“We didn’t expect that — that they would come to attack,” he said. “We were in the middle of a Palestinian area next to Palestinian houses.”
The attack came amid several violent incidents in the area.
Israeli security forces told NBC News they received reports that “Israeli rioters had arrived in the area and that violent clashes had occurred, including stone-hurling toward Palestinians and additional civilians,” addressing violence in nearby Qusra, a Palestinian village that has been besieged by Israeli settlers for weeks.
“Upon their arrival, the security forces identified dozens of rioters who had barricaded themselves inside a Palestinian home while Palestinian residents were inside,” the statement said.
“The security forces who arrived at the scene initially operated to remove the rioters from the home and separate the groups, in order to protect the residents inside the house. In addition, the security forces confiscated vehicles belonging to the Israeli rioters that were suspected of having been used to reach the area,” the statement said.
“IDF soldiers and Israel Border Police forces continue to operate in the areas of Qusra and Jalud to prevent further disturbances and restore order in the area,” it added.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he condemned the “criminal acts of violence committed in the villages of Kosra and Jalud by a handful of rioters who violate the law, cause enormous injustice to the law-abiding settler public, hinder the IDF in fulfilling its missions and harm Israel’s standing in the world.”
There has been a spate of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. Between Jan. 1 and July 24, Israeli forces or settlers killed 76 Palestinians, according to the latest data available from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Three Israelis were killed over the same period, the data shows.
Netanyahu’s hard-line government has been accused of turning a blind eye to the settler attacks in the West Bank, which many governments around the world consider illegally occupied. In its statement after the attack, Israeli security forces said they “strongly condemn all forms of violence.”
Captured in the 1967 Middle East war, the West Bank is home to 3 million Palestinians and 500,000 Israeli settlers.
The recent escalation in violence has increased pressure on the Israeli military to stop these armed groups. The United Nations and media workers have also reported an uptick in attacks on foreign, Palestinian and Israeli journalists in the West Bank.
