


Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh in the West Bank overnight, torching cars and spray-painting threatening graffiti, a witness and the Palestinian Authority said Monday.
Footage from the incident showed several cars up in flames and Hebrew graffiti daubed onto the walls of a home in the Ramallah-area village.
There were no immediate reports of arrests. These are highly rare in such incidents, which have taken place almost unchecked on a near-daily basis in the West Bank. Israeli police opened a probe into the incident.
Jeries Azar, a Taybeh resident and journalist for Palestine TV, told AFP his house and car were targeted in the predawn 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, recalling the fate of the Dawabsheh family, a couple who burned to death with their baby when 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 army 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 police had 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.
Taybeh and its surroundings have experienced several bouts of settler violence in recent months, including an arson attack near 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.
While the Trump administration hasn’t weighed in on most other settler attacks on Palestinians, the targeting of Christians has sparked US ire, and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee even paid a solidarity visit to Taybeh earlier this month after the town endured several incidents of extremist violence.
Settlers have also attacked neighboring communities in recent months, resulting in three deaths, damage to Palestinian water wells, and the displacement of at least one rural herding community.
On Saturday, Palestinians accused settlers of attacking the northern West Bank village of Jalud, injuring several people and setting fire to homes and a poultry farm.
Israel has controlled the West Bank since capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War. 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 Knesset passed a nonbinding motion calling on the government to annex the West Bank.