An Israeli court in Jerusalem has ordered the release of nine out of ten Israeli settler suspects who were arrested in connection with violent attacks against a US journalist and European diplomats in the occupied West Bank. According to Honenu, a legal organization representing the settlers, the decision to transfer the suspects to house arrest was handed down late on Wednesday.

Israeli police claimed that only one suspect remains in custody while the investigation into the violent episodes allegedly continues. Last week, masked settlers were captured on video brutally assaulting Heidi Levine, a Washington Post photojournalist covering the Palestinian olive harvest. Levine was subsequently hospitalized and required surgery on her finger following the attack.

In a separate incident earlier in the week, masked perpetrators targeted diplomats from France, Belgium, and Poland, alongside a French mayor, in another sector of the West Bank. The detentions had initially occurred only after the United States regime exerted pressure calling for a crackdown on settler violence, which was echoed by urgent appeals from Paris, Brussels, and Warsaw.

Critics and human rights organizations point to a systemic lack of accountability in the region. Yonatan Kanonich, head of research at the Israeli rights group Yesh Din, stated that in the vast majority of assaults against Palestinians, no arrests are carried out at all. He noted that even when cases attract significant media attention, authorities typically arrest a handful of individuals only to release most of them shortly afterward.

Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the situation across the occupied Palestinian territories as completely out of control. Local monitoring bodies have documented hundreds of violent incidents during the olive harvest season, ranging from crop theft and the burning of olive groves to direct armed intimidation and physical assaults against farmers.

Source: www.aljazeera.com