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Palestinian killed as settlers torch homes and cars in West Bank village

Sulaiman Umar
16 Aug, 2024
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Dozens of extremist Israeli settlers, many of them masked, rampaged in the West Bank Palestinian village of Jit on Thursday night, setting fire to homes and vehicles. A Palestinian man was also reported killed amid the attack.

The settlers hurled stones and Molotov cocktails, torching at least four homes and six vehicles in the village, located just west of Nablus. More than 100 assailants were involved, according to an Israeli security official.

The Palestinian Authority health ministry said a 23-year-old Palestinian, named Rasheed Seda, was killed and another Palestinian civilian was critically wounded by the “settlers’ bullets.”

Israeli security sources said it was unclear who had shot the Palestinians.

The Israel Defense Forces said that minutes after the “grave incident” was reported, troops and border police officers were dispatched to the scene. The IDF said the troops used riot dispersal means and live fire in the air while taking the Israelis out of the village.

One of the assailants who participated in the attack was detained and handed over to police, the IDF said.

The military also said it is looking into the death of the Palestinian amid the attack, and had launched a joint investigation with the police and Shin Bet security agency.

“The IDF condemns events of this type and the rioters, who harm security, law and order, and divert the IDF and the security forces from their main mission of thwarting terrorism and protecting the security of the residents,” the military added in a statement.

Police did not respond to requests for comment, directing The Times of Israel to the IDF’s statement.

The prime minister and president both issued strong condemnations of the rampage.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he views the incident “with severity,” but appeared to frame the actions as a misguided attempt to fight terror, rather than as terrorism itself, saying: “Those who fight terrorism are only the IDF and security forces, not anyone else.”

The PMO added: “Those responsible for any crime will be caught and prosecuted.”

President Isaac Herzog issued a statement saying he “strongly condemns” the riot.

“This is an extreme minority that harms the law-abiding community of [settlers] and the settlement movement as a whole, in addition to harming the global reputation of Israel during a particularly sensitive and difficult period,” Herzog lamented.

“This is not our way and certainly not the way of Torah and Judaism. Law enforcement officials must act immediately against this dangerous phenomenon and bring the lawbreakers to justice.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant denounced the “handful of extremists” for rampaging in Jit “while our soldiers are fighting on various fronts to defend the State of Israel.”

“I firmly condemn any type of violence and give my full backing to the IDF, the Shin Bet and Israel Police to perform their roles and deal with the matter severely,” Gallant wrote in Hebrew on X. “The extremist rioting goes against all moral commandments of the State of Israel.”

He also published an English-language version of the tweet.

Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, meanwhile, urged the Shin Bet and other law enforcement bodies to “act immediately to eradicate the phenomenon of grave nationalistic crime that took place this evening against innocents in the village of Jit.”

Arbel, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said the actions “go against the values of Judaism, are a moral and human low point, and harm the State of Israel and the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria.”

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry in charge of settlement affairs, said the storming of Jit was “not connected in any way to the settlement enterprise or to settlers.”

“They are criminals who should be dealt with to the full extent of the law by law enforcement authorities,” Smotrich said.

“We build and develop the settlements in a legal and stately manner, back the IDF in its struggle against terror, and strongly disagree with any display of criminal anarchist violence that has absolutely nothing to do with love of the land and settlement of it.”

Smotrich’s reaction was markedly different from his reaction last year to a similar settler rampage in the West Bank town of Huwara. Days after that incident, he triggered an international outcry by saying Huwara “needs to be wiped out” and that “the State of Israel should do it.”

“There’s no place for violence. Period,” said MK Zvi Sukkot of Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, a longtime radical settler activist who last year set up a sukkah in Huwara amid clashes there between settlers and Palestinians that followed a terror shooting and other violent incidents.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir meanwhile lashed out at Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, claiming they were to blame for the rampage in Jit.

“I told the chief of staff this evening that not backing soldiers in shooting any terrorist who throws rocks leads to the type of incidents like tonight,” Ben Gvir, who heads the ultranationalist Otzma Yehidut party and as head of the National Security Ministry is in charge of police, said in a statement.

“Despite this, it’s unequivocally forbidden to take the law into your own hands,” he continued, without explicitly denouncing the rioters. “It’s the IDF that needs to deal with terror and deterrence, including toward the terrorists from Jit. The time has come for the defense minister to leave this preconception and do it.”

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, 26 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.

culled from THE TIMES OF ISRAEL