A group of U.S. diplomats was attacked by Jewish settlers in the West Bank on Friday. Several settlers threw rocks at U.S. consular officials who were investigating Palestinian claims of damage done to local villagers’ crops by the settlers. “The nearby Palestinian village of Turmus Ayya reported this week that thousands of recently-planted olive saplings had been uprooted by local settlers in recent weeks,” BuzzFeed reports.
The confrontation took place after the convoy of U.S. officials arrived near the Jewish settlement Adi Ad. Here’s more from the Times of Israel:
When the American visitors arrived and exited their vehicles, a number of settlers pelted them with rocks. This led security guards to draw their weapons. The consulate staff promptly left the scene, ending the incident without anyone being hurt. The rocks caused some light damage to consulate cars.
“In October 2013, an Israeli NGO accused police of ‘miserably failing’ to protect Palestinian olive groves in the West Bank from vandalism, producing just a handful of indictments in over 200 documented cases of tree destruction over the past nine years,” the Times of Israel reports.
