A Palestinian mob lightly wounded a Jewish shepherd near the Israeli community of Ma’ale Amos in the Gush Etzion region of Judea on Thursday morning, according to the Israel Police and medical officials.
According to reports, the 18-year-old resident of Mikne Avraham, a herding outpost outside Ma’ale Amos, was alone in the pasture when he was attacked by some six Palestinians armed with clubs and rocks.
Magen David Adom medics provided treatment at the scene and evacuated the victim to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital with a minor head wound, according to a Hebrew-language statement from MDA.
According to police, the victim’s wounds were the result of one of the Palestinians “brutally [attacking] him with stones, hitting him in the head and ribs.”
Judea and Samaria District police chief Cmdr. Moshe Pinchi instructed officers to use “all operational and technological means to reach the attacker and bring him to justice,” the statement added.
According to figures collected by authorities, Palestinian aggression against Jewish shepherds in Judea and Samaria has been on the rise.
“Jewish farmers are grazing their sheep in open areas; Arabs don’t like that, even if it happens in Area C [of Judea and Samaria, where Israeli civilian communities are located]. They’re trying to stop them by using violence,” a local official from Judea and Samaria told JNS in mid-2023.
Last month, Israeli security forces arrested two Palestinians suspected of having wounded Israeli shepherds in southern Samaria.
In the Feb. 22 incident, several Palestinians armed with clubs, knives and rocks attacked two Jewish shepherds in a pasture in the Michmash area before fleeing toward the village of Deir Dibwan.
The month prior, authorities arrested two Palestinians who were part of a group that attacked and wounded a Jewish shepherd near Ramat Migron in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria on Jan. 2.
The shepherd, from the Migron area, sustained a head wound and had to be evacuated to the hospital.
Palestinian terrorists targeted Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria at least 6,343 times in 2024, according to figures published last month by the Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) NGO.
Twenty-seven Israelis were murdered in Judea and Samaria in 2024, and more than 300 others were wounded, the group said in its annual report.
The figures, which were cross-checked against official data from Israel’s security services, included 3,668 instances of rock throwing, 843 attacks with fire bombs, 671 attempts to blind drivers with laser pointers, 526 involving explosive charges, 364 cases of arson and 179 shootings.
The NGO also recorded 37 attempted or successful stabbings, 36 bottles of paint being thrown at vehicles and 19 Palestinian car-ramming attacks, including 12 that caused injuries to Israeli victims.