Settler rampage in West Bank spurs rare rebuke from Israeli leaders

A Palestinian man gestures to a badly damaged ceiling in a room that had been set ablaze.

By Julia Frankel and Aref Tufaha

Aug. 16, 2024 Updated 2:21 PM PT

JIT, West Bank —

As mediators on Friday wrapped up a two-day session as they try to negotiate a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, fallout continued after a deadly settler rampage in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israeli leaders on Friday condemned the attack in a rare denunciation of the settler violence growing more common since the start of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The settler riot in the village of Jit, near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, killed one Palestinian and badly injured others late Thursday, Palestinian health officials said. Residents said at least a hundred masked settlers entered the village, shot live ammunition at Palestinians, burned homes and cars and damaged water tankers. Video showed flames engulfing the small village, which residents said was left to defend itself without military help for two hours.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he took the riots “seriously” and that Israelis who carried out criminal acts would be prosecuted. He issued what appeared to be a call for settlers to stand down.

“Those who fight terrorism are the IDF and the security forces, and no one else,” he said, using an acronym for the Israel Defense Forces.

Sufian Jit, a resident of the village, said a group of 100 settlers streamed in before sundown Thursday, burning cars, puncturing water tankers and destroying homes.

He said he called the army and firefighters, pleading for help. Firefighters never came, so villagers ran between burning cars to put out the flames, he said. After two hours, he said, soldiers arrived.

“It was more than 100 settlers against us. At the beginning, there were just a few people trying to stop them, and then later the whole town came and stopped them,” he said.

The Palestinians seek the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war, as the heartland of a future state, a position with wide international backing.

Rights groups say that arrests for settler violence are rare, and prosecutions even rarer. Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported in 2022 that based on statistics from the Israeli police, charges were pressed in only 3.8% of cases of settler violence, with most cases being opened and closed without any action being taken.

President Isaac Herzog condemned the attack, as did Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who said the settlers had “attacked innocent people.”

It was unclear why the Jit attack yielded such a strong rebuke from Israeli leaders. A similar settler riot in the village of Al Mughayyir in April went without comparable mention from the authorities. The Jit attack comes as Israel is under heightened international scrutiny over its role in cease-fire talks with the American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators in Doha, Qatar, yet another attempt to broker an end to the 10-month-old war.

The French foreign minister and the British foreign secretary were in Israel on Friday for meetings with diplomatic officials, and both condemned the attack.

The U.S. has broadly condemned settler violence and the expansion of Israel’s West Bank settlements. U.S. Ambassador Jack Lew wrote on the social media platform X on Friday that he was “appalled” by the attack, and the White House National Security Council called violent settler attacks “unacceptable.”

”Israeli authorities must take measures to protect all communities from harm, this includes intervening to stop such violence, and holding all perpetrators of such violence to account,” it said in a statement.

Other Israeli officials distinguished between the settler attack on Jit and the larger Israeli settlement project, which the international community views as illegal under international law.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — an ultranationalist settler who has turbocharged settlement expansion, railed against U.S. sanctions on violent settlers and previously defended violent settlers as heroes — labeled the rioters “criminals” who were “in no way related to the settlement and the settlers.”

Ultra-Orthodox Interior Minister Moshe Arbel called on Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency to investigate those involved and said the riot ran against Jewish values and harmed the “settlement enterprise.”

Since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7 with the Gaza-based militant group’s deadly attack in southern Israel, violence has flared in the occupied West Bank; Palestinian health officials say 633 Palestinians, including 147 children and teenagers, have been killed by Israeli fire and more than 5,400 injured. Many have been killed during Israeli military raids into Palestinian cities and towns, but settlers have killed at least 11 Palestinians, including two children, and injured 234 people, according to the Assn. of International Development Agencies, or AIDA, a coalition of nonprofit and other groups working in the territory.

The United Nations documented more than 1,000 settler attacks in the West Bank since the start of the war, averaging four a day. That’s double the average during the same period last year, according to AIDA.

The Israeli military said late Thursday it had arrested one Israeli civilian in connection with the violence and opened an investigation. Police did not say whether the civilian was still in custody Friday, but said they were working with Shin Bet and the military to investigate and “bring the relevant perpetrators to justice.”

Mourners prepared Friday for the funeral of 23-year-old Rasheed Mahmoud Abed Al Khadier Sadah. His relative Ibrahim Sadah said many residents wanted to help defend the village but had to take shelter once settlers started firing live ammunition.

Associated Press writers Tufaha reported from Jit, Frankel from Jerusalem.