Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian homes and burned vehicles in the occupied West Bank on two consecutive nights in early October, leaving families with damaged property and homes targeted with racist graffiti.
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, settlers attacked the Wadi Jheish area on the eastern edge of al-Samu, south of Hebron, on 4 and 5 October. During the first attack, settlers set fire to a car belonging to Mahmoud Musa al-Rawashdeh and damaged his property, while spraying racist slogans on the walls of his home.
The following night, settlers returned to Wadi Jheish and also attacked homes in Wadi al-Rakhim, near the neighbouring town of Yatta. They set fire to a truck and three cars, burned straw around another family’s home, damaged property and smashed the windows of a separate house. In nearby Masafer Yatta, settlers also drove livestock onto Palestinian farmland, damaging crops and restricting residents’ movement.
The attacks come amid a wider escalation of settler violence across the occupied West Bank. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that Israeli forces demolished 49 structures across three communities in Masafer Yatta between 2 and 8 September, displacing 57 Palestinians, including 27 children.
Around 1,200 Palestinians live in 13 communities within the area Israel has designated as Firing Zone 918, where residents face ongoing pressure from demolitions and displacement.
In July, UN officials warned that settler violence across the occupied West Bank had reached unprecedented levels. Times of Palestine reported that it could find no public statement from the Israeli army addressing the attacks on al-Samu in the days that followed.
