Hundreds of Israeli settlers torched Palestinian cars and houses in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, as part of a series of vigilante attacks that come a day after Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis.
Palestinian health officials said one person was killed and a further three suffered bullet wounds in Turmus Ayya, a town near Ramallah that residents said was attacked by settlers on Wednesday afternoon.
The attacks are the latest flare-up in 18 months of mounting violence that have fuelled fears that the security situation in the West Bank could spiral out of control.
Wadi Alqam, a former head of the Turmus Ayya municipality, said a group of between 200 and 300 settlers had entered the town and set fire to around 25 to 30 cars and around 40 to 45 houses.
“They started burning things and breaking all the windows in the houses,” he said, adding that the full extent of the damage was unclear as many people had not yet been able to return to their homes.
Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh called the attacks “barbaric”.
The latest cycle of violence in the West Bank — which Palestinians seek as the heart of a future state but Israel has occupied since 1967 — began on Monday. Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians and injured more than 90 in a raid on the West Bank city of Jenin, which escalated into a multi-hour gun battle with militants.
The following day, two Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis and injured another four at a petrol station near the Jewish settlement of Eli, sparking a series of attacks by settlers in nearby towns overnight.
The violence has led to demands from hardliners in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government — in which ultranationalist settlers hold key security posts — for the army to take a more aggressive approach to militant groups in the West Bank.
After the shooting in Eli, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for a “military campaign” in the territory.
“We need a return to targeted killings from the air, bringing down buildings, setting up roadblocks, expelling terrorists and to finish passing the death penalty for terrorists legislation,” he said on Tuesday.
Netanyahu said on Tuesday that “all options are open”.
This year is already on course to be the bloodiest in the West Bank for more than a decade, after Israeli forces began conducting near-nightly raids following a spate of attacks by Palestinians on Israelis last spring.
According to UN data, which does not include the most recent violence, Israeli forces have killed 114 Palestinians in the West Bank so far this year and Palestinians have killed 16 Israelis.
