Israeli military sat on distress calls about settler attacks for two hours, report says

The Israeli military sat on distress calls for nearly two hours as activists reported threats from settlers in the occupied West Bank, but took no action until the attack on diplomats and others was over, the Haaretz daily reports.

The report said that Israeli military operations room received reports about the threats and calls for help as early as 1 pm on Saturday. Yet the Civil Administration and troops on the ground were informed of the attack only around 3 pm, after the attacks had ended.

One activist accompanying local Palestinians reportedly sent the army a video and the exact location of the incident, warning: “At least seven masked settlers armed with clubs. Come quickly, very scary. They stole bags of olives from Palestinians.”

The military has opened a special probe into the sequence of events and why no action was taken in real time to prevent the violence, Haaretz reports.

Israeli rights group, Yesh Din, has said that it documented 377 incidents of settler and soldier violence against Palestinians from 27 September to 10 October, adding an average of approximately 27 incidents of violence occurred per day across 162 Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

Of these incidents, 174 were directly related to the olive harvest, and soldiers were present in 25 percent of the cases.

"The lack of law enforcement against violent settlers and soldiers who attack Palestinian olive harvesters, damage olive trees, and steal the harvest indicates that the obstruction of the olive harvest is part of a broader, systematic Israeli policy aimed at inflicting economic and cultural harm on Palestinians and displacing them from their land," Yesh Din said in a statement on X.