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Israeli settlers attack West Bank Palestinian community, burn homes
Israeli settlers attacked a small Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank, injuring people, destroying homes and smashing their power source, the military and residents said on Thursday, in the latest in a spate of violent confrontations.
AFP journalists in remote Khirbet al-Tuba saw buildings blackened by fire and smoke, the interiors of three homes completely burned and graffiti in Hebrew spray-painted on remaining structures.
The dozen solar panels the isolated southern community relies on for power had also been smashed to render them unusable.
The Israeli military said it “strongly condemned” the raid and that it had responded after “homes being set on fire and Palestinians being attacked in the area by Israeli civilians” late on Wednesday.
People check damaged solar panels, which Palestinians say were damaged by Israeli settlers, in Tuba in Masafer Yatta, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on August 6, 2026. — Reuters
“Several Palestinians were injured, among them a girl and a woman. Several structures were also burned,” the military said. “The suspects fled before the forces arrived.”
Radwan Jundiya, whose house was torched, told AFP that about 40 settlers attacked the hamlet at around 10 pm.
“The settlers started throwing stones. We rushed to protect the women, but they got to my wife and daughter and beat them,” he said. “Then they started spraying something and setting the room on fire. The pictures tell the whole story.”
Locals said that five people were wounded in the attack, including Jundiya’s wife and daughter, as well as another child.
“From the moment the attack began until daybreak, we spent the whole night standing here, putting out the fires and helping the injured,” Ali Awad, another resident whose son was injured, told AFP.
Ibrahim Zein, another resident of Khirbet al-Tuba, told AFP that it was the second time settlers attacked the village.
“The first time they burned the well, and this time they destroyed these rooms,” Zein said. “Last night they terrified us. I wasn’t even awake. They woke the children, then came straight to the rooms.”
Israeli security forces stop a Palestinian motorist for inspection at a checkpoint during an Israeli military raid in the Qalandia refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on August 6, 2026. — AFP
Violence by Israeli settlers towards Palestinians in the West Bank has persisted for years, but recent months have seen a surge in attacks.
Excluding Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, some 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank among some three million Palestinians.
Khirbet al-Tuba is a community of about 100 people in the West Bank region of Masafer Yatta, where shepherding communities face frequent settler violence and home demolitions by the military, which has declared parts of the area an army firing zone.
The army said it would investigate, but Palestinians and rights groups complain that such investigations rarely lead to prosecutions, and that violent settlers are able to act with impunity — and the army’s support when clashes break out.
“When we used to file complaints with the Israeli police over previous attacks, the Israeli army would come and arrest the (Palestinian) residents,” local activist Osama Makhamreh told AFP on Thursday.
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which has been occupied since 1967, are illegal under international law. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, has drastically increased the number of settlements and settlement outposts in the Palestinian territory.
Israeli settler charged over killing of Palestinian activist
Prosecutors charged an Israeli settler on Thursday in the killing of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in the occupied West Bank, the first such indictment since the outbreak of the Gaza war in 2023, activists say.
“Yinon Eliya Levi [33], from Ma’on, has been charged with allegedly firing toward an area where people were present during a confrontation that developed over earthworks on private land, causing the death of the late Awdah Hathaleen,” Israel’s Ministry of Justice said on X.
“The Southern District Prosecutor’s Office has filed an indictment against him … on charges of reckless manslaughter, trespassing, and willful property damage.”
Hathaleen, an activist who took part in the production of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was killed in July 2025 during a settler attack on his village of Umm al-Khair, in the southern West Bank.
Umm al-Khair sits in the region of Masafer Yatta, where Palestinian communities have faced frequent settler violence and home demolitions by the military, which has declared parts of the area an army firing zone.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem said the indictment was the first of its kind for the killing of a Palestinian in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, which marked the beginning of a surge in violence in the West Bank.
“The decision to indict Yinon Levi is the exception that proves the rule,” B’Tselem spokesman Yair Dvir told AFP, accusing Israel of fostering a culture of impunity that “is not a failure of the system – it is a central component”.
Hathaleen’s attorney Eitan Peleg told AFP the indictment “is a very important decision. I hope it will be a precedent in future cases of [Israelis] committing crimes against Palestinians in Palestine.
“Many Palestinians are killed by settlers, by the army, but this was the first time a full investigation was held and they had no other option but to charge. This was a very clear case,” he added.
Palestinian rights group Al-Haq conducted a forensic investigation of Hathaleen’s killing, using footage in which Levi is seen shooting at a crowd of Palestinians in Umm al-Khair the day he was killed.
The US and EU placed sanctions on Levi in April 2024 for previous violent attacks on Palestinians.
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