The young man in custody, 21 years old and from Douma, in the occupied West Bank, is accused of killing the teenage settler Benjamin Achimer, 14, whose body was found on 13 April in the West Bank, triggering a wave of violence by settlers in several Palestinian villages.

The settlers are the inhabitants of the settlements built by Israel since 1968 in the areas it occupied in Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria during the Six-Day War (1967).

During the search for Achimer, dozens of settlers invaded the village of al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, where they killed a Palestinian and injured 25 more.

In the following days, nine other villages were attacked, with crowds setting fire to homes and vehicles.

According to the Israeli army, the suspect admitted his responsibility during questioning.

However, the chairman of the Douma neighbourhood council, Suleiman Dawabshi, questions the detainee's confession and assures that Israel only wants to justify the armed attack in the region by settlers supported by the army.

The municipal official assures that he has already complained to the military authorities about the joint attack by armed civilians and soldiers of the regular Israeli army and claims to have documentary evidence of the participation of soldiers, which - according to Dawabshi himself - the Israeli army denies.

"Settlers and soldiers displaced entire Palestinian communities, destroying all homes, with the apparent support of the Israeli authorities," denounced five days ago the activist of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch Bill Van Esveld.

"As the world's attention focuses on Gaza, abuses in the West Bank, fueled by decades of impunity and complacency among Israel's allies, are increasing," he warned.

Since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip, settler attacks on the occupied Palestinian territory have increased to unprecedented levels.

The UN recorded more than 700 settler attacks between 7 October 2023 (the day the war began) and 3 April, stressing that soldiers were present in almost half of the attacks.

The attacks carried out since 7 October in the West Bank have forced more than 1,200 people, including 600 children, to flee their homes in Palestinian herding communities.

At least 17 Palestinians have been killed and 400 injured, while the Palestinians have killed seven settlers in the occupied West Bank, according to the UN.

The ongoing conflict was triggered by the unprecedented attack carried out on 7 October in Israeli territory by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

The attack killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians but also about 400 soldiers, and served for Hamas to take almost 240 hostages, of which more than 100 remain kidnapped in the Gaza Strip.

In retaliation, Israel, which promised to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement, has bombed the Gaza Strip, where, according to the local government led by Hamas, more than 34,000 people have already been killed -- most of them civilians.

The Israeli offensive has also destroyed most of Gaza's infrastructure and nearly two million people have been forced to leave their homes, that is, almost all of the 2.3 million inhabitants of the enclave, controlled by Hamas since 2007.

The population of the Gaza Strip is also facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, due to the collapse of hospitals, the outbreak of epidemics and shortages of drinking water, food, medicine and electricity.

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