Israeli settlers accused of attempting to kidnap four-year-old Palestinian

Majd Asous told Ma'an that he left his four-year-old son Nadim in a parked car outside a store in the village of Huwwara south of Nablus when a group of Israeli settlers in a red Subaru approached the boy.

Asous said that the settlers approached the car and grabbed the boy, but they fled the area after the child started screaming.

The father added that following the incident he followed the settlers' car, which then entered the Jewish-only settlement of Bracha near the village of Burin. 

Asous was unable to follow the vehicle into the settlement as access is forbidden for non-Jews.

The boy was subsequently taken to a hospital to be treated for trauma.

The villages south of Nablus are frequent sites of settler violence as they are located beside the notoriously violent Israeli settlements of Yitzhar and Bracha.

Settlers frequently attack a number of local villages and prevent farmers from reaching their lands, in addition to attacks on local olive trees.

Settler violence against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank is systematic and ignored by Israeli authorities, who rarely intervene in the violent attacks or prosecute the perpetrators.

So far in 2014, there have been at least 313 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.