Palestinian killed as Israeli settlers torch West Bank village (2024)

A Palestinian man was shot dead as dozens of Israeli settlers attacked a village in the north of the occupied West Bank overnight, setting fire to houses and cars, Palestinian officials say.

The settlers - some wearing masks - also threw rocks and Molotov co*cktails in the village of Jit, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, adding that one was arrested.

The Palestinian health ministry said Rashid Sedda, 22, was killed by gunfire from the settlers and another man was seriously wounded in what it condemned as an act of “organised state terrorism”. The IDF said it was looking into the reports of a fatality.

Israel’s prime minister said he viewed the incident with “utmost severity”.

It is the latest in the series of attacks by extremist settlers on Palestinian villages in the West Bank, where there has been a spike in violence since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem - land the Palestinians want as part of a future state - in the 1967 Middle East war.

The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Footage shared on social media showed cars and houses ablaze following the deadly rampage in Jit on Thursday night.

As he inspected the damage to his home on Friday morning, Ibrahim al-Seda told the BBC he had been sitting outside his home with relatives after the sunset Maghrib prayer when he heard a crash.

“We looked out and saw seven, eight, maybe 10 settlers. Two cars were set on fire,” he said. “My children ran outside, and we grabbed the hose to try to put out the fire on the cars. But the water wasn’t enough; we couldn’t extinguish the flames. Then they started throwing rocks from above.”

“The people from the town came to defend us and our neighbourhood. Then more settlers arrived, this time armed. They started shooting.”

He added: “Young men who were defending us from above the wall threw stones to protect themselves. We were outnumbered. There were probably around 100 settlers by the end. The people who were down below had to run away because they couldn’t stand against the gunfire.

“The settlers took control of the area. They set two more cars on fire and prevented us from going outside because they would shoot anyone who tried.”

Mr Seda said Israeli soldiers arrived “about an hour later” and that they fired shots into the air but “didn’t intervene much at that point just to stop what was going on”.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics had treated a Palestinian villager who was shot in the chest and rushed him to the Rafida Government Hospital in the nearby city of Nablus, where his condition was described as critical, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa. Rashid Sedda’s body was also taken there.

In a statement, the IDF said its forces and Border Police officers were despatched to the village "within minutes" of receiving reports of violence. They fired into the air to disperse the crowds and “remove[d] the Israeli civilians”, it added. One person was arrested and transferred to the police for questioning, it added.

The IDF said it had opened a joint investigation with the Shin Bet domestic security service and the police following what it called “this serious incident”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement that he took “seriously the riots that took place this evening" and promised that “those responsible for any criminal act will be caught and prosecuted".

President Isaac Herzog wrote in a post on X: "This is an extreme minority that harms the law-abiding community of settlers and the settlement as a whole and in the name and status of Israel in the world during a particularly sensitive and difficult period.

The US, Israel's main ally, also issued a condemnation, saying that such attacks on Palestinian civilians were “unacceptable and must stop”.

“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,” a National Security Council spokesperson said.

Palestinian analyst and former Palestinian Authority spokeswoman Nour Odeh told the BBC that such attacks happened "on a daily basis”.

“These condemnations [by Israeli leaders] are viewed as performative by the Palestinian public, because the track record is [that] the investigations go nowhere, nobody is prosecuted, nobody is held to account, and these settlers can count on the full support of members of the government to protect them.”

The UN said on Wednesday that it had recorded around 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 7 October. About 120 of those attacks led to people being killed or injured, and 1,000 led to property damage.

It also said a total of 594 Palestinians - members of armed groups, attackers and civilians - were killed in conflict-related incidents across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, over the same period. At least 577 were killed by Israeli forces and 10 by settlers, it added.

Fifteen Israelis, including nine security forces personnel and five settlers, were also killed by Palestinians in the West Bank, while another 10 Israelis were killed in attacks in Israel by Palestinians from the West Bank, according to the UN.