Gaza conflict spills into West Bank amid settler attacks
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Transcript
00:00 Now, Catherine, you shot that report with your colleagues.
00:02 Clearly, tensions rising in the West Bank,
00:04 not only due to Israeli army raids,
00:07 but also increasing vigilante attacks
00:09 by Israeli Jewish settlers.
00:12 Tell us more about filming that report, Catherine.
00:14 Well, it's something that we've been hearing increasingly about.
00:21 As we said in the report, this is a phenomenon
00:23 that has existed for some time.
00:25 But today in the occupied West Bank,
00:27 you've got Palestinians who are increasingly scared
00:31 because you've got settler groups who
00:33 have become more active.
00:35 They've increased their attacks on Palestinian civilians.
00:38 So they've been coming down onto the farms,
00:40 as we saw in the report, or at other times,
00:43 damaging infrastructure, such as buildings, houses,
00:46 business things, setting fire to them.
00:48 So a lot of people there are living in fear.
00:51 And some are packing up their belongings, even,
00:54 and relocating.
00:55 So in de facto, being pushed off their land there,
01:00 this is something which is causing lives to be lost.
01:02 There aren't exact figures for the whole of the West Bank
01:06 in the village where we filmed in Kuzra.
01:08 Six people so far have been killed,
01:10 according to local authorities.
01:12 But across the West Bank, the figures are higher.
01:15 We know that more than 160 Palestinians
01:18 have been killed in the West Bank since the 7th of October.
01:22 But that figure is a mixture of the settler attacks,
01:26 and also Israeli army raids and clashes
01:28 between armed Palestinian groups and the Israeli army.
01:31 So it's a complicated picture.
01:33 But it's one which is concerning a lot of people there,
01:36 a lot of people in the region as well.
01:38 And there's a real sense today that the West Bank
01:41 is a tinderbox, that it's starting to reignite.
01:45 When you ask people there, do they
01:47 think this is perhaps a start of a third intifada,
01:51 all of the Palestinians I've asked that question to say
01:53 that the intifada is already taking place.
01:56 So perhaps there's a sense that this
01:58 is reaching a new level of tension there in the West Bank.
02:02 And it's a situation which could get dramatically worse.
02:07 Catherine Norris, Trent reporting live there
02:09 from Tel Aviv, thank you.