Palestinians report 7 settler attacks overnight amid escalating West Bank violence

At least 2 Palestinians said be hospitalized for injuries they suffered during attacks on homes, vehicles and other property

Palestinians reported a wave of settler violence across the West Bank overnight Thursday to Friday, highlighting a pattern of attacks that continue despite recent condemnations from Israeli officials and pledges to prosecute the largely untouched offenders.

In the northern West Bank, the village of Luban a-Sharqiya saw several buildings torched, leaving extensive property damage but no reported injuries. Nearby, in Abu Falah near Ramallah, an agricultural building was also set on fire, allegedly by settlers.

Further north, a plant nursery in Deir Sharaf, near Nablus, was vandalized, while in Huwara, more than a dozen Palestinian-owned vehicles were burned in a parking lot. Witnesses reported seeing masked settlers fleeing the scene.

Settlers were also filmed raiding the village of Beit Furik to intimidate locals, despite the town’s location in Area B, where Israeli citizens are prohibited from entering. In the South Hebron Hills village of Markaz, several Palestinians were reportedly beaten with clubs by masked men, leaving one resident hospitalized in moderate condition.

In a separate incident outside the village of Susya, settlers were reported to knock an 85-year-old Palestinian and his donkey to the ground on the way to the mosque, causing injuries that required hospitalization. Days earlier, settlers had sprayed Hebrew graffiti on nearby buildings.

In all of the incidents, there were no reports of arrests, which are highly rare in such cases.

Adding to tensions, a public WhatsApp channel run by Jewish extremists circulated a video boasting of the number of attacks carried out against Palestinians over the Hebrew month of Heshvan, which ended Thursday.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a weekly cabinet meeting that Israel “will take very forceful action against the riots against IDF soldiers — against Palestinians and against IDF soldiers — because we are a nation of laws, and a nation of laws acts in accordance with the law,” marking his first public comment on the matter.

His statement came after IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir condemned recent attacks, saying they “cross a red line and divert the attention of our forces from fulfilling their mission.”

According to a Thursday report, Israel’s security establishment has drafted a series of new recommendations aimed at curbing Jewish nationalist crime and settler violence in the West Bank, following a sharp rise in serious incidents over the past year.

Legal disputes have also escalated. A Palestinian family in Sanur, near Jenin, petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice after alleging that the IDF seized their cattle and transferred them to neighboring settlers.

The family contended that the seizure was violent, citing beaten animals, property destruction, and detention of family members. Neighboring settlers living in a nearby illegal farming outpost claimed that the cows had originally belonged to them. Still, the Palestinian family said the IDF provided no proof of this ownership when troops seized the cattle from their village last month.

The Palestinian family argued in a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel that the IDF seizure was conducted violently, with people detained, animals beaten and property destroyed.

Meanwhile, international condemnations of the violence have grown. Singapore announced that it will impose financial sanctions and entry bans on four Israeli settler leaders — Meir Mordechai Ettinger, Elisha Yered, Bentzi Gopstein and Baruch Marzel — for “egregious acts of extreme violence” against Palestinians. Singapore’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said the actions jeopardized prospects for a two-state solution.

All four individuals have been previously sanctioned by the European Union. Ettinger, Yered and Gopstein have also been sanctioned by Canada. Some have also been sanctioned by the US.