RAMALLAH, West Bank—Jewish settlers burst into several villages in the occupied West Bank, smashing homes and cars and beating up at least two people, Palestinian officials said. The attacks came a day after Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli man in a shooting ambush in the territory.
The death of settler Yehuda Dimentman, killed when gunmen opened fire on his car near a West Bank settlement outpost late Dec. 16, threatened to ignite further violence between Palestinian residents and Israeli settlers. Two other passengers in Mr. Dimentman’s vehicle were lightly wounded.
Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official who monitors settlement activities, said groups of settlers entered several Palestinian villages near the northern city of Nablus early Dec. 17, smashing up cars and homes. Two Palestinians required hospital treatment.
In the Palestinian village of Qaryout, settlers broke into one house and tried to abduct a local resident, Wael Miqbel, according to Mr. Daghlas.
›Photos later shared on social media showed Miqbel with bruises and swelling across his face, while other videos and photos published online showed confrontations between armed settlers and Palestinian residents.
Israeli leaders have vowed to find the assailants behind the shooting and the army deployed additional forces to the area. According to the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, at least three men from the northern village of Burqa were arrested in overnight raids.
Mr. Dimentman’s car came under fire after leaving a Jewish seminary in the outpost of Homesh, a former settlement evacuated as part of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. In recent years, settlers have re-established an unauthorized outpost at the site, one of dozens of outposts in the West Bank that are considered illegal but often tolerated by the Israeli government. The latest attacks come amid an uptick in Israeli-Palestinian violence across the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. (AP)
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