Israeli settlers attack two Palestinian towns and their own army in the West Bank

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli settlers attacked two Palestinian towns early on Wednesday, setting fire to property and throwing stones, after police tried to dismantle an illegal settler outpost in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military said.

Police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service said they had arrested eight people for assaulting security forces and damaging property.

Palestinian officials said settlers set fire to a house and two cars in Huwara, a village near the city of Nablus that has been attacked in the past by radical settlers who want Israel to claim sovereignty over the entire West Bank territory.

A group of settlers also set fire to property in the nearby town of Beit Furik.

The Palestinian president’s office condemned the violence and said there had been around 30 settler attacks in the Nablus area in less than a month. Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh called for US intervention.

The Israeli military said a group of settlers had clashed with both its own forces and police.

“The IDF strongly condemns all violence of any kind against IDF personnel and views these incidents with the utmost severity,” the military said in its statement.

According to the United Nations, more than 700,000 Israeli settlers now live among 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory Israel captured in 1967. Most countries consider settlements built on captured land illegal. Israel disputes this and cites historical and biblical ties to the land.

There has been an increase in violence in the West Bank since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel, which triggered Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and a broader conflict on several fronts.

Some groups of young settlers reject the jurisdiction of the Israeli army in areas they consider under their control and have attacked Israeli forces as well as Palestinians.

Some settler leaders have said violence has no place in their movement and have called for offenders to be prosecuted.

Settler groups have taken advantage of the violence in Gaza to try to build new outposts in areas that the State of Israel has not yet authorized, and have occasionally sent in the army to dismantle them.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Peter Graff)