Israel’s defense forces said Friday that he was aware of the reports of a murdered Palestinian civilian and that several Palestinians were injured and said the matter was being examined by the Israeli authorities.
Police told NBC News that several people from “both parties” had been arrested at the scene under suspicion of participation in acts of violence that the Israel Police and the IDF Military Police had launched a joint investigation.
He requested an update on the investigation on Wednesday, the FDI repeated that the Israel Police had launched an investigation and the criminal investigation division of the Military Police. The Israel Police did not respond immediately when asked.
A spokesman for the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Musallet’s murder occurs in the midst of a deadly increase in the violence of settlers against the Palestinians in the West Bank. A United Nations report in March warned that violence had “increased in a climate of continuous impunity.”
Hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers live in radical settlements throughout the West Bank that the international community widely considers that it is illegal.
More than 960 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Hamas led attacks against Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, according to a database maintained by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), marking a strong increase in the previous years.
In the year before Hamas attacks, just over 250 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank according to Ocha data.
The settlers are rarely face legal consequences for violence against the Palestinians, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, with more than 93% of the investigations between 2005 and 2023 closed without an accusation and only 3% leads to a conviction, according to a report published last year.
