French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Israel must 'urgently halt criminal violence' and arrest those responsible for attacking the mayor. (EPA Images pic)JERUSALEM: Israeli settlers on Saturday attacked a convoy of European diplomats in the West Bank and beat up a visiting French mayor, witnesses said, a day after an American photographer was similarly set upon as violence escalates ahead of bitterly fought elections.
The 78-year-old mayor said masked settlers yelled defamatory comments about France, kicked him and hit him with iron bars as he joined Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank alongside the top French and Belgian representatives in Jerusalem and Polish diplomats.
"I think that if settlers are behaving like this, there is a tolerance on the part of the Israeli government," Bernard Baudoux, mayor of the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, told AFP after he was attacked.
