Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank overnight, torching cars and spray-painting threatening graffiti, a witness and the Palestinian Authority said Monday.
Jeries Azar, a Taybeh resident and journalist for Palestine TV, told AFP his house and car were targeted in the pre-dawn assault.
"I looked outside and saw my car on fire, and they were throwing something at the vehicle and in the direction of the house," Azar said.
The Palestinian Authority issued a statement blaming "Israeli colonial settlers" for the attack on Taybeh.
Azar said he was terrified and put himself in the shoes of the Dawabsheh family, a couple who burned to death with their baby after settlers attacked their West Bank village of Duma in 2015.
"My greatest fear was for my two-year-old son. After we escaped, he cried nonstop for an hour", Azar said, adding that the Israeli army had surveyed the area after the attack.
Israeli police and the military said in a joint statement that a unit was dispatched to Taybeh and reported "two burned Palestinian vehicles and graffiti".
The statement said that no suspects were apprehended but that Israeli police have launched an investigation.
A photo shared by a Palestinian government agency on social media showed graffiti on a Taybeh wall that read: "Al-Mughayyir, you will regret", referring to a nearby village that was also attacked by settlers earlier this year.
The Palestinian Authority's foreign ministry condemned the attack, calling it "settler terrorism".
Germany's ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, also condemned the action, writing on X: "These extremist settlers may claim that God gave them the land. But they are nothing but criminals abhorrent to any faith".
Taybeh and its surroundings have experienced several bouts of settler violence in recent months, including an arson attack at an ancient Byzantine church.
The village -- home to about 1,300 mostly Christian Palestinians, many holding US dual citizenship -- is known for its brewery, the oldest in the Palestinian territories.
Settlers have attacked neighbouring communities in recent months, resulting in three deaths, damage to Palestinian water wells and the displacement of at least one rural herding community.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. The territory is home to about three million Palestinians and around 700,000 Israeli settlers, including about 200,000 in east Jerusalem.
Last week, 71 members of Israel's 120-seat parliament, or Knesset, passed a motion calling on the government to annex the West Bank.
Why do they still get to call themselves settlers? Imagine what they’d be called elsewhere if they crossed a border to live in land that belonged by international treaty to someone else, and then burned the resident’s cars and wrote threatening graffiti and threw things at people’s houses?
Invading terrorist militia