An estimated 400 Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and their homes and property in the West Bank town of Huwara, a southern district of Nablus, on Sunday night in what has been called the worst outbreak of settler violence there in decades.
According to local news reports, roughly 30 Palestinian homes and cars were set on fire, one of which had a Palestinian family inside. Israeli authorities who responded to the conflagration reportedly rescued the family. Palestinians responded to the attacks by throwing rocks at the rioters.
Video posted on social media showed columns of fire and smoke pouring in the sky, and captured Israeli settlers pausing their attack for evening prayers, drawing criticism from Jews online for doing so.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, a 37-year-old man was shot and killed by Israelis during the riot, and two others had been wounded by gunfire. Another person was treated for stab wounds, and a fifth had been beaten with an iron bar. Another 350 people were also being treated for tear gas inhalation.
The violence was widely denounced in the US, France, and the Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem, the lattermost of which accused the Israeli government of encouraging the attack, which it called a “pogrom.”
“The Jewish Supremacist regime carried out a pogrom in the villages around Nablus yesterday. This isn't ‘loss of control’. This is exactly what Israeli control looks like. The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it. It’s a synergy,” B’Tselem said in a statement. “The Huwarah Pogrom was an extreme manifestation of a long-standing Israeli policy. It was carried out by the state of Israel.”
After the attack, a large number of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv carrying signs that read “Palestinian Lives Matter” and demonstrating against the settlers’ attack.
Brothers Killed
The events were largely set in motion earlier in the day, when two Jewish Israelis were shot dead in the town.
21-year-old Hillel Yaniv and 19-year-old Yagel Yaniv, two brothers from the nearby settlement of Har Bracha, were shot dead at close range in their car in Hawara. They were transported to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva for treatment, where they were pronounced dead. According to witnesses cited in Israeli media, the Palestinian gunman was wearing a shirt bearing the insignia of the Lion’s Den, a militant group based in Nablus.
As Israeli police mounted a manhunt for the shooter, checkpoints were set up and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rushed reinforcements into the West Bank in anticipation of violence.
After the shooting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir issued a joint statement saying they had just approved a law legalizing the death penalty for anyone convicted of terrorism against Israelis.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the new controversial far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government alongside Ben-Gvir, said that "calm will only be achieved once the Israeli army strikes the terror cities without mercy."
He called for the return of Israeli delegates to a security summit in the Jordanian city of Aqaba with Palestinian, Jordanian, Egyptian, and American delegates to talk about the situation in the West Bank and Gaza.
Months of Deadly Raids
The West Bank, which has been under Israeli control since 1967 but over much of which the Palestinian National Authority claims some level of control, has been the site of increasing violence between Jewish settlers and Palestinians.
Since late last year, operations by the IDF and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, in the West Bank have been almost nightly occurrences. One raid in Nablus last October saw more than 100 IDF vehicles rush into the city after sunset for a raid against the Lion’s Den that resulted in five Palestinian deaths and 21 others being wounded. Another in the Jenin refugee camp in January allegedly aimed at detaining several members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). However, the raid resulted in the deaths of 10 people, including children and elderly, and over a dozen others were injured by, among other things, the tear-gassing of a hospital.
Then in Nablus last week, another IDF raid resulted in the deaths of 11 Palestinians and the wounding of more than 100 others. Afterward, when IDF soldiers were accused of shooting randomly into crowded streets in the Old City, Israel Defense Forces international spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said that “the IDF only shoots at threats.”
Tensions have been building in the West Bank for years, though, and the recent violence has many fearing the beginning of a “Third Intifada,” or Palestinian mass uprising. Two previous uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and from 2000 to 2005, resulted in Israel granting major concessions to Palestinians at the cost of thousands of lives on both sides.
During a recent meeting with PNA President Mahmoud Abbas, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly advised him to reassert PNA control over Nablus and Jenin; PNA officials replied that they had already lost the legitimacy needed to operate in both cities. Abbas’ government, in power since 2006, has been widely criticized for its corruption and for cooperating with Israeli authorities against grassroots Palestinian resistance groups.