Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian villages in the north and south of the West Bank on Saturday, injuring several people and setting fire to vehicles and olive groves, Palestinian media said. No arrests were reported.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, said armed settlers wounded several people in the southern village of Susta, including a 62-year-old woman hit in the head with a stone and a 52-year-old woman who was beaten all over her body.
Footage on social media, said to be from Susya, showed masked assailants armed with sticks beating Palestinians, including several women.
Meanwhile, Wafa cited sources in the northern village of Rujeib as saying they were assaulted after trying to fend off an earlier settler attack on nearby Khallet al-Abhar. No injuries were reported from either attack, the agency said.
It added that settlers had burned olive groves in the village of Sira, south of Nablus.
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The IDF said Rujeib was attacked by masked rioters from the nearby settlement of Itamar.
عصابات سموتريتش وبن غفير تهاجم المدنيين الفلسطينين على اراضيهم في سوسيا جنوب الضفة pic.twitter.com/U0qwORLGgO
— ترجمات الصحف breaking news ???? (@galebsami) August 24, 2024
“A confrontation and stone-throwing ensued between them and Palestinians who were there. As a result of the stone-throwing, several Palestinian vehicles were damaged,” the IDF said.
Soldiers and Border Police officers stationed in the area, along with other forces dispatched to the scene, “stopped the friction and dispersed the rioters,” the army said. The statement did not mention any arrests.
The IDF has yet to comment on the violence in the West Bank’s south.
The attacks came after a Palestinian man was killed and several injured as settlers stormed through the village of Jit, west of Nablus, on August 15, leaving burned cars and homes in their wake.
On August 10, four Arab-Israeli women and a 3-year-old girl were assaulted, and their car burned, when they accidentally entered the outpost of Givat Ronen en route to Nablus.
Palestinians inspect damage in the West Bank village of Jit a day after extremist settlers attacked the town, August 16, 2024. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)
Following the two attacks, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar on Thursday penned a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning that Jewish terrorists were being emboldened by a “secret sense of backing from the police.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is in charge of the police, reportedly stormed out of a Thursday cabinet meeting after Netanyahu and other ministers rejected his demand to fire Bar over the letter.
Settler violence spiked after the October 7 massacre carried out by the Hamas terror group in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage, but violence was already on the rise before then, according to watchdogs.
Israeli authorities rarely arrest Jewish perpetrators in such attacks. Rights groups lament that convictions are even more unusual and that the vast majority of charges in such attacks are dropped.
Since October 7, troops have arrested some 4,850 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 1,960 affiliated with Hamas.
According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 630 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.
There have also been several cases of settlers killing Palestinians in the past 10 months, some of which are still under investigation.
During the same period, 27 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another five members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
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