With rocks, clubs and flammable liquid, Jewish settlers descend on a Palestinian hamlet

JERUSALEM (AP) — Dozens of Jewish settlers carrying clubs, rocks and bottles of flammable liquid strode into the Palestinian hamlet of Susiya and set fire to vehicles, security camera footage obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday shows.

Susiya is in the hills of the southern West Bank, where Palestinians often experience settler attacks and whose plight was depicted in last year’s Oscar-winning documentary, “No Other Land.” Just under a year ago, a settler attack on the village sent a director of the film to the hospital with injuries from a beating.

The footage of Tuesday’s attack is the most recent demonstration of what Palestinians in this area of the Israeli-occupied West Bank say they routinely face. Settler attacks had been increasing for years but spiked after Oct. 7, 2023, when a Hamas-led attack sparked the war in Gaza.

The Israeli military said soldiers and police went to the area after receiving reports of fire. It said officers searched for suspects but didn’t say whether they found or arrested anyone. It said an investigation was opened.

Tuesday’s attack occurred around 8 p.m., according to timestamps on the footage from two cameras in the village.

Footage from one camera shows approximately two dozen settlers dressed in black entering the village. Some carry white bottles, which they appear to use to sprinkle a flammable liquid at the foot of a truck before setting it alight. Others throw rocks toward a home, the security camera and a car, breaking its windshield.

Footage from another camera shows settlers beating and cracking the windshield of the car from a closer angle. Also visible is a settler attempting to kick in the door of a caravan.

Resident Fatima Al-Nawaja said she was huddling inside her home when, on the security camera, she saw at least 30 settlers enter the village, setting fire to her family’s truck and a caravan.

By morning, when a delegation of European diplomats visited the hamlet, the truck was a burned-out shell.

Alexander Stutzman, the European Union representative for Gaza and the West Bank, denounced settler violence and described the footage he saw as “not a good image for anyone, and … not a good image for Israel either.

“There has to be an end to this,” he said.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, violence by Jewish settlers has soared in the West Bank, causing 18 Palestinian deaths and at least 1,225 injuries, according to the U.N. humanitarian office, OCHA.

Between Feb. 3 and 16 of this year, OCHA documented at least 86 settler attacks that resulted in property damage and injuries across the territory. It said the incidents displaced 146 people and injured 64 Palestinians, and damaged 39 Palestinian vehicles, more than 800 Palestinian olive trees and water networks and schools.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has played down the violence as the work of a small group of extremists. His hardline government, meanwhile, has accelerated the legalization and construction of new settlements and allowed settlers to establish new outposts on hilltops ringing Palestinian villages.

Palestinian residents of Susiya said they saw the attacks as part of a pressure campaign to displace them.

Resident Halima Abu Eid said the community would remain steadfast. She vowed to rebuild what was burned. But she said the attacks had consequences beyond the charred vehicles and homes.

“I have daughters, they frightened them,” she said. “They couldn’t sleep at all.”