JERUSALEM: Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked a pair of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, setting fire to vehicles and other property before clashing with Israeli soldiers sent to halt the rampage, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.
It was the latest in a series of attacks by young settlers in the West Bank.
Israeli police said four Israelis were arrested in what it described as “extremist violence,” while the Israeli military said four Palestinians were wounded. Police and Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency said they were investigating.
Videos on social media showed two charred trucks engulfed in flames, with a nearby building on fire. Settler violence has surged since the war in Gaza erupted two years ago. The attacks have intensified in recent weeks as Palestinians harvest their olive trees in an annual ritual.
Earlier on Tuesday, tens of thousands of Israelis attended the funeral of an Israeli soldier whose remains had been held in Gaza for 11 years, overflowing and blocking surrounding streets as somber crowds stood with Israeli flags.
The burial of Lt. Hadar Goldin was a moment of closure for his family, which had traveled the world in a public campaign seeking his return. The huge turnout also reflected the importance for the broader public in Israel, where Goldin became a household name.
Hamas returned his remains on Sunday as part of the US-brokered ceasefire deal that began last month. The bodies of four hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, are still in Gaza.
Settler violence in the West Bank
The UN humanitarian office last week reported more Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in October than in any other month since it began keeping track in 2006. There were over 260 attacks, the office said.
Palestinians and human rights workers accuse the Israeli army and police of failing to halt attacks by settlers. Israel’s government is dominated by West Bank settlers, and the police force is overseen by Cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hard-line settler leader.
In Tuesday’s incident, the army said soldiers initially responded to settler attacks in the villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf. It said the settlers fled to a nearby industrial zone and attacked soldiers sent to the scene and damaged a military vehicle.
Palestinian official Muayyad Shaaban, who heads the government’s Commission against the Wall and Settlements, said the settlers set fire to four dairy trucks, farmland, tin shacks and tents belonging to a Bedouin community.
He said the attacks were part of a campaign to drive Palestinians from their land and accused Israel of giving the settlers protection and immunity. He called for sanctions against groups that “sponsor and support the colonial settlement terrorism project.”
French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the attacks during his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Paris on Tuesday, saying that “settler violence and the acceleration of settlement projects are reaching new heights, threatening the stability of the West Bank.”
Palestinians in Gaza still struggling to access food
Displaced Palestinians in central Gaza said they continue to rely heavily on charity kitchens for their only daily meal, as soaring market prices and the lack of income leave them struggling.
Scores of people, most of them children, lined up with empty pots at a charity kitchen in Nuseirat refugee camp on Tuesday waiting to be served rice — the only food available that day.
“The rockets and planes stopped but increasing living costs has been the hardest weapon used against us,” said Mohamed Al-Naqlah, a displaced Palestinian.
On Tuesday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has risen to 69,182. Its count, generally considered by independent experts as reliable, does not distinguish between militants and civilians, but the ministry says more than half of those killed were women and children.
The latest war began with the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel when around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and 251 people were kidnapped.
Close adviser to Netanyahu resigns
Cabinet Minister Ron Dermer, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidants, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing family reasons.
In a letter, Dermer said he had promised his family to serve two years but extended his term by an additional year to deal with Iran’s nuclear program and “to end the war in Gaza on Israel’s terms and bring our hostages home.”
The US-born Dermer is a former Israeli ambassador to Washington. As strategic affairs minister, he served as Netanyahu’s envoy throughout the war in dealing with the United States and ceasefire negotiations.
Funeral for soldier whose remains were held 11 years
Goldin was 23 when he was killed two hours after a ceasefire took effect in the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas. For years before the 2023 attack, posters with the faces of Goldin and Oron Shaul, another soldier whose body was abducted in the 2014 war, stared down from intersections.
Israel’s military long ago determined that Goldin had been killed based on evidence found in the tunnel where his body was taken, including a blood-soaked shirt and prayer fringes. On Tuesday, it announced it had dismantled the tunnel shaft where his body was found. The military retrieved Shaul’s body in January.
Eulogies from Goldin’s siblings, parents, and former fiancee at his funeral never mentioned Netanyahu, who was prime minister when Goldin was kidnapped and for most of the period since. They thanked the Israeli military, including reserve soldiers, who tirelessly searched for Goldin’s body over the years.
Netanyahu did not attend the funeral, though Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, gave a eulogy on behalf of the military.
For years, Israel had four hostages in Gaza: Goldin, Shaul, and two Israelis with mental health issues who had crossed into Gaza on their own and were held since 2014 and 2015. All four were returned in the past year.
