Dozens of masked men armed with sticks have been filmed beating and injuring a Palestinian man in the Israeli-occupied West Bank at a plant nursery.
According to videos recorded by locals and from security cameras, which the AP agency had access to, men dressed in black, with their faces covered, are seen, as several of them punch and kick a man on the ground.
Two eyewitnesses, members of the family that owns the facility, said Israeli settlers beat 67-year-old Basim Saleh Yassin as he tried to escape from the German-Palestinian-run nursery in the village of Deir Sharaf in the northern West Bank.
The workers fled when they saw the settlers arriving on Thursday, but Yasin is deaf and could not hear warnings to leave, a family member said.
Witnesses said Yasin was hospitalized with broken bones in his arm and other injuries to his face, chest and back. Four cars in the nursery were burned.
The attack is the latest in a surge in Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, where attacks increased during the Palestinian olive harvest in October and continued afterward.
Israeli authorities did little beyond occasionally condemning the violence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the perpetrators "a handful of extremists" and called on law enforcement to prosecute them for "attempting to take the law into their own hands."
However, human rights groups and Palestinians say the problem is much bigger than a few incidents and that attacks have become a daily occurrence across the territory.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza - areas that Palestinians claim as their future state - in the 1967 war. Israel has settled more than 500.000 Jews in the West Bank.
The settlements are considered illegal under international law.
Bonus video:
