BETHLEHEM, Monday, April 08, 2019 (WAFA) – A Palestinian youth was hospitalized on Monday afternoon after an Israeli settler rammed his car into him and fled the scene on Jerusalem-Hebron Road near the illegal settlement of Gush Etzion, south of Bethlehem.

Head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society Mohammad Awad confirmed to WAFA that Hamza Shihadeh Najajra, a resident of Nahalin village, west of Bethlehem, was run over by an Israeli settler on road connecting Jerusalem to Gush Etzion settlement, known as Route 60.

Awad said that Najajra suffered from critical injury in the head and was rushed to a hospital in Jerusalem for necessary medical treatment.

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.

Route 60 is used as a bypass road for settlers traveling between Jerusalem, the Gush Etzion settlement bloc near Bethlehem and all of the settlements in the Hebron district.

Between 500,000 and 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.

K.F.