Jewish settlers vandalised and set fire to Palestinian property at various locations in the occupied West Bank on Thursday night in the latest incidents in an escalation of violence.
Palestinian residents reported that settlers set fire to four residential buildings in one village, torched a farm in a village outside Ramallah, damaged a nursery in a village near Nablus and attacked an 85-year-old man in the South Hebron hills.
The attacks were the latest incidents of growing settler violence carried out by roving gangs of masked youths. The violence tends to increase when Israeli authorities move to dismantle illegal outposts or Jewish residents are killed in Palestinian militant attacks, such as occurred this week when a settler was killed near Bethlehem.
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas condemned what he termed “settler terrorism” and called on the international community to hold the Israeli government to account.
RM Block
Israeli president Yitzhak Herzog called the violence “shocking”, saying it “crosses a red line”.
According to United Nations data, more than 260 vigilante attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties or property damage occurred in October. Last week US secretary of state Marco Rubio warned that the situation could escalate dramatically if Israel failed to act.
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting on Thursday evening to address the problem. Earlier this week he promised that Israel “will take very forceful action … because we are a nation of laws, and a nation of laws acts in accordance with the law”.
The head of the army’s central command, Maj Gen Avi Bluth, warned: “The writing is on the wall. There are normal residents living on the farms, and in the outposts there are disorderly lawbreakers and rioters.”
Perpetrators are rarely detained and brought to trial, and in many instances soldiers can be seen standing to the side and failing to intervene to protect Palestinians under attack.
Defence minister Israel Katz removed one of the most effective tools at the government’s disposal when he cancelled the policy of administrative detention, or detention without trial, that had been used against some Jewish suspects and remains in place for suspected Palestinian militants.
The two far-right parties in Mr Netanyahu’s coalition have an ideological affinity with the settlers and blame the violence on a lawless fringe, dubbed the hilltop youth, who live on small illegal outposts dotted across the West Bank.
With Israel in election year, more robust measures against those carrying out the attacks are unlikely even though the violence undermines attempts by the government to portray Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East and a state that upholds the rule of law.
