Fire-blackened walls, shattered windows and charred cars: Residents of the Palestinian town of Huwara in the occupied West Bank discovered damage from an attack by Israeli settlers on Monday after two of them were killed by Palestinian fire.
Rarely, the Israeli authorities called on the settlers to calm down after this new episode of violence which comes at a time when the conflict is already experiencing a marked escalation and when officials from each side pledged, during a meeting on Sunday in Jordan, to “prevent any further violence”.
On Sunday evening, hundreds of Israeli settlers entered Huwara, a small town in the northern occupied West Bank where tensions are frequent. They threw stones at Palestinian homes, set fire to buildings, garbage cans and cars, noted an AFP journalist.
In the early morning, a landfill looked like a car graveyard, with dozens of charred vehicles.
“They burned everything they found,” resident Kamal Odeh told AFP: “They burned down more than 20 buildings, including shops, houses. Even the trees were not spared”.
According to Wajeh Odeh, a member of the Huwara municipality, more than 100 cars were set on fire and 30 houses burned or damaged.
“We consider these acts to be acts of terrorism,” an Israeli army official told reporters, estimating that 300 to 400 settlers had entered the Palestinian town in a spirit of “revenge”.
Ten people were arrested, said the army, which said it had evacuated dozens of Palestinians whose homes were threatened by fires.
” Out of control “
“There can be no justification for terrorism, arson and acts of revenge against civilians,” UN Middle East mediator Tor Wennesland said in a statement, saying he was “deeply concerned” .
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has deemed “unacceptable” the violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967, worrying about violence threatening “to degenerate out of control”.
He also “strongly condemned the attack which claimed the lives of two Israelis”.
They were driving in Huwara on Sunday afternoon when they were shot dead in what the Israeli government called a “Palestinian terrorist attack”.
Later, a Palestinian was shot dead while Israeli forces and settlers were in Zaatara, another village near Nablus. The army told AFP that they had not shot him.
“We want security, but the responsibility for providing security rests solely with the army,” Esty Yaniv, the mother of the two settlers, told reporters on Monday.
Several hundred people attended their funeral in Jerusalem on Monday. Their coffins were covered with Israeli flags and carried by relatives and soldiers, according to an AFP journalist on the spot.
“Pogrom”
“We cannot tolerate a situation where citizens are taking the law into their own hands,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said after similar remarks from National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, settlement mayors and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At the head since the end of December of one of the most right-wing governments in the history of Israel, which has several ministers who are themselves settlers, Mr. Netanyahu asked that we let “the security forces carry out their assignment “.
Israeli human rights organizations have denounced a “pogrom”, “supported” by the Israeli government, according to “Peace now”.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of “protecting terrorist acts perpetrated by settlers”.
The army has multiplied for almost a year in the north of the West Bank the operations presented as “anti-terrorist”.
On Wednesday, eleven Palestinians were killed in Nablus in the deadliest Israeli military incursion into the West Bank since at least 2005.
Since the beginning of the year, the conflict has claimed the lives of 63 Palestinians (including combatants and civilians including minors) and 12 Israelis (including minors and security forces) and one Ukrainian woman, according to a count of AFP compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
At a Sunday meeting in Jordan, senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials “reaffirmed the need to engage in de-escalation on the ground and prevent further violence”.