HEBRON, Thursday, March 21, 2019 (WAFA) – A 53-year-old Palestinian was hospitalized on Thursday morning after an Israeli settler rammed his car into him and fled the scene in the Old City of Hebron.

Aref Jaber, a photojournalist and member of the Human Rights Defenders Group in Hebron, told WAFA that a settler rammed his car into 53-year-old Jum‘a Qafisha and fled the scene.

Qafisha suffered from a fractured arm and bruises and was immediately transferred to a hospital for necessary medical treatment. His condition was described as moderate.

Attacks involving Israeli settlers ramming their cars into Palestinians are a relatively regular occurrence in the occupied West Bank, and are rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.

Israeli police usually treat such attacks as accidents, even in cases when witnesses claim the ramming attacks were deliberate.

The city of Hebron, which houses the Ibrahimi Mosque, is home to roughly 160,000 Palestinian Muslims and about 800 notoriously aggressive Israeli settlers who live in compounds heavily guarded by Israeli troops.

Palestinians of the city face a large Israeli military presence on a daily basis with at least 32 permanent and partial checkpoints set up at the entrances of many streets.

Since the 1994 Ibrahimi Mosque massacre that claimed the lives of 29 Palestinians, Palestinians have not been allowed to access the main al-Shuhada Street and have had their homes and shops on the street welded shut. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers move freely on the street, drive cars and carry machine guns.

Israel has expelled the only international monitors protecting Hebron’s Palestinians from 800 heavily guarded settlers, one of whom committed the 1994 massacre that triggered their deployment.

K.T./ K.F.