“It is the responsibility of the Israeli government to implement and enforce the rule of law in the event of attacks on people who live here legitimately and are attacked illegally,” Baerbock said during a visit to a Palestinian community in the West Bank.
It is the responsibility of the Israeli army to protect Palestinians from violent settlers, she added.
Baerbock talked to residents in the Palestinian village of al-Mazra’a al-Qibliya, north-west of the de-facto Palestinian West Bank capital of Ramallah. The village, which has a population of over 5,000, is surrounded by several Israeli settlements.
One of the residents – a farmer – described how he was no longer able to cultivate his fruit and vegetable fields because of the settlers.
He had been hit on the head and sprayed with pepper spray while his daughters were also attacked, the 70-year-old retired teacher said.
The Israelis also tried to set fire to houses and drove him out of his home, which is located in a valley between the Palestinian village and the settlement, he added.
The allegations could not be independently verified.
Baerbock said what is happening around the village is “illegal under Israeli law and illegal under international law” and that the increase in settle violence since October 7 “also shows that stability in Gaza and the West Bank are closely linked.”
She again called for a two-state solution, adding: “Settlement construction is illegal. It undermines lasting peace and jeopardizes the two-state solution, thereby also endangering Israel’s security.”
In Ramallah, Baerbock met Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki to discuss the issue. She later plans to hold talks in Israel, including with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant before heading to Egypt and Lebanon.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also travelling the region.
During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel took control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, among other territories. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers now live there, surrounded by around 3 million Palestinians, who have Western backing to form their own state in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The political focus may have temporarily switched to the West Bank but the war rages on in Gaza and threatens to spill into Lebanon, with Houthi rebels in Yemen also occasionally attacking Israel, prompting a possible fourth front.
The number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip has risen to 23,084 since the start of the war three months ago, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority.
Almost 59,000 people have been injured, a statement added. Within the last 24 hours, 249 people had been killed in Israeli attacks in the coastal strip and around 70% of those killed are said to be women and children. The figures cannot be independently verified.
An aid organization also said medical workers have been forced to leave the al-Aqsa hospital in the central Gaza Strip due to increasing Israeli military operations.
It remains “the only functioning hospital in the centre of Gaza,” the New York-based International Rescue Committee (IRC) said.
Israel meanwhile assumes that 136 hostages are still being held in the Gaza Strip and 25 of them are probably no longer alive, an Israeli government spokeswoman announced.
The hostages also include the bodies of two soldiers who were kidnapped during the last major Gaza war in 2014, as well as two other Israelis who have been held in the coastal strip since then.
In southern Lebanon, a military commander of the pro-Iranian and pro-Hamas Hezbollah movement was killed in a suspected Israeli drone attack, a Lebanese security source said.
Wissam al-Tawil, code-named Haj Jawad, was killed when an Israeli drone hit the car he was in. The Hezbollah press office also confirmed his death but did not give his rank.
The Israeli armed forces confirmed they had again fired on several Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
Air force fighter jets attacked a military facility and a rocket launcher near the border while an Israeli drone and a helicopter also attacked positions from which Israel had been fired upon, they added.
