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Photo:
Screenshot from video showing Israeli soldier vandalizing car in West Bank. Published by Haaretz
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by Hagar Shezaf for Haaretz
Jun 30, 2023

An Israeli soldier was filmed vandalizing a Palestinian's car in the West Bank village of Qaryut on Friday.

The video, reportedly filmed by a local Palestinian, shows a soldier in partial uniform breaking the window of the vehicle.

According to an IDF statement, the incident occurred while the soldier was conducting routine patrols in the village, which is close to the settlement of Eli, and was reported to the military police.

"This is a grave incident that is not in line with the values of the IDF and the expectations of its soldiers," the statement said.

Last week, four Israelis were killed and another four wounded by a Palestinian gunman near Eli, after an IDF raid of the West Bank city of Jenin which left six Palestinians killed and seven Israeli forces wounded.

Following the attack, settlers commenced on a series of revenge attacks, including a rampage in which dozens of Jewish settlers, some armed, set fire to houses and vehicles in the Palestinian West Bank town of Turmus Ayya. The next day, settlers set fire to a school and tried to burn homes and mosques in the village of Urif.

The Israeli military has decried the vigilante violence, but residents of Turmus Ayya criticized the IDF for doing little to stop the violence, and said that soldiers only arrived in the village after the rioting settlers had left.

The IDF's Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi stated on Wednesday that any officer who stands by as "an Israeli citizen" torches a Palestinian house, "cannot be an officer."

Addressing the commencement ceremony of the IDF's officers course, Israel's top general implied that recent terror incidents in the West Bank have ignited subsequent "illegal and immoral acts," referring to the deadly shooting in Eli and the ensuing settler rampages.

"An officer who sees an Israeli citizen, intending to throw a Molotov cocktail at a Palestinian house and stands idly by, cannot be an officer," Halevi declared.

Over the weekend, the chiefs of the IDF, Shin Bet and Israel Police denounced the increasing attacks by settlers against Palestinian villages over the past several weeks as “nationalist terror.”

Earlier on Friday, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a Facebook post that "one could think" that that the Shin Bet security service division in charge of investigating Jewish nationalist crime should be shut down.