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Fire in West Bank town of Jit on Thursday. Published by Haaretz
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Over 100 assailants take part in rampage in Jit; unclear who shot dead man in his 20s, while wounding another; suspect arrested; PM, Herzog, Gallant and others denounce violence

By EMANUEL FABIAN for The Times of Israel
and TOI STAFF
16 August 2024, 1:42 am

Dozens of extremist Israeli settlers, many of them masked, rampaged in the West Bank Palestinian village of Jit on Thursday night, setting fire to homes and vehicles. A Palestinian man was also reported killed amid the attack.

The settlers hurled stones and Molotov cocktails, torching at least four homes and six vehicles in the village, located just west of Nablus. More than 100 assailants were involved, according to an Israeli security official.

The Palestinian Authority health ministry said a 23-year-old Palestinian, named Rasheed Seda, was killed and another Palestinian civilian was critically wounded by the “settlers’ bullets.”

Israeli security sources said it was unclear who had shot the Palestinians.

The Israel Defense Forces said that minutes after the “grave incident” was reported, troops and border police officers were dispatched to the scene. The IDF said the troops used riot dispersal means and live fire in the air while taking the Israelis out of the village.

One of the assailants who participated in the attack was detained and handed over to police, the IDF said.

The military also said it is looking into the death of the Palestinian amid the attack, and had launched a joint investigation with the police and Shin Bet security agency.

“The IDF condemns events of this type and the rioters, who harm security, law and order, and divert the IDF and the security forces from their main mission of thwarting terrorism and protecting the security of the residents,” the military added in a statement.

Police did not respond to requests for comment, directing The Times of Israel to the IDF’s statement.

The prime minister and president both issued strong condemnations of the rampage.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he views the incident “with severity,” but appeared to frame the actions as a misguided attempt to fight terror, rather than as terrorism in of itself, saying: “Those who fight terrorism are only the IDF and security forces, not anyone else.”

The PMO added: “Those responsible for any crime will be caught and prosecuted.”

“This is an extreme minority that harms the law-abiding community of [settlers] and the settlement movement as a whole, in addition to harming the global reputation of Israel during a particularly sensitive and difficult period,” Herzog lamented.

“This is not our way and certainly not the way of Torah and Judaism. Law enforcement officials must act immediately against this dangerous phenomenon and bring the lawbreakers to justice.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant denounced the “handful of extremists” for rampaging in Jit “while our soldiers are fighting on various fronts to defend the State of Israel.”

“I firmly condemn any type of violence and give my full backing to the IDF, the Shin Bet and Israel Police to perform their roles and deal with matter severely,” Gallant wrote in Hebrew on X. “The extremist rioting goes against all moral commandments of the State of Israel.”

He also published an English-language version of the tweet.

Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, meanwhile, urged the Shin Bet and other law enforcement bodies to “act immediately to eradicate the phenomenon of grave nationalistic crime that took place this evening against innocents in the village of Jit.”

Arbel, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said the action “go against the values of Judaism, are a moral and human low point, and harm the State of Israel and the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria.”

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry in charge of settlement affairs, said the storming of Jit was “not connected in any way to the settlement enterprise or to settlers.”

“They are criminals who should be dealt with to the full extent of the law by law enforcement authorities,” Smotrich said.
“We build and develop the settlements in a legal and stately manner, back the IDF in its struggle against terror, and strongly disagree with any display of criminal anarchist violence that has absolutely nothing to do with love of the land and settlement of it.”

Smotrich’s reaction was markedly different from his reaction last year to a similar settler rampage in the West Bank town of Huwara. Days after that incident, he triggered an international outcry by saying Huwara “needs to be wiped out” and that “the State of Israel should do it.”

“There’s no place for violence. Period,” said MK Zvi Sukkot of Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, a longtime radical settler activist who last year set up a sukkah in Huwara amid clashes there between settlers and Palestinians that followed a terror shooting and other violent incidents.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir meanwhile lashed out at IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Yoav Gallant, claiming they were to blame for the rampage in Jit.

“I told the chief of staff this evening that not backing soldiers in shooting any terrorist who throws rocks leads to the type of incidents like tonight,” Ben Gvir, who heads the ultranationalist Otzma Yehidut party and as head of the National Security Ministry is in charge of police, said in a statement.

“Despite this, it’s unequivocally forbidden to take the law into your own hands,” he continued, without explicitly denouncing the rioters. “It’s the IDF that needs to deal with terror and deterrence, including toward the terrorists from Jit. The time has come for the defense minister to leave this conception and do it.”

Settler violence spiked after the October 7 massacre carried out by the Hamas terror group in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage, but violence was already on the rise before then, according to watchdogs.

Israeli authorities rarely arrest Jewish perpetrators in such attacks. Rights groups lament that convictions are even more unusual, and the vast majority of charges in such attacks are dropped.

Since October 7, troops have arrested some 4,850 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 1,960 affiliated with Hamas.

According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 630 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.

There have also been several cases of settlers killing Palestinians in the past 10 months, some of which are still under investigation.

During the same period, 26 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another five members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.
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Foreign Ministry Calls On Sanctions On Colonizers/b>

by IMEMC News
Aug 16, 2024

The Palestinian Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry stated that the armed assault by fanatic Israeli colonizers on Jeet village, east of Qalqilia, in the northwestern part of the occupied West Bank, which led to the death of a young man and left another critically wounded, as well as the arson of homes and vehicles, constitutes organized state-sponsored terrorism.

In a statement, the Ministry vehemently denounced “the savage onslaught by settler terrorist groups on Jeet village,” labeling it a “dangerous intensification of the continuous offenses against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, perpetrated under the auspices of the occupying army, which steps in to quell the citizens’ self-defense efforts.”

The Ministry regards this attack with utmost gravity, noting that it was a premeditated, armed collective assault by approximately 100 colonizers, intent on killing, resulting in the killing of Rashid , and injuries to others, alongside the torching of numerous homes and vehicles belonging to the villagers.

The Ministry stated that when about 100 armed persons with weapons provided to them by Israeli National Security Minister, colonialist settler Itamar Ben-Gvir, gather and attack the Palestinians, they do so because they are politically, legally, and security-wise shielded and supported.

Such attacks are not unprecedented, reminiscent of multiple assaults on Huwwara town, south of Nablus, including its incineration among other offenses.

The Ministry reiterated its call for a decisive international response that compels the occupying power to “dismantle the terrorist settler outposts and militias scattered across the occupied West Bank, cut off their financial support, remove their political and legal immunity, apprehend their criminal members, and coerce them to terminate their colonial replacement agenda and racist discriminatory practices in occupied Palestine.”

The Ministry asserts that the collective attack on Jeet Village proves that the sanctions imposed by some nations on certain terrorist settler elements are inadequate and fail to deter them from ceasing their atrocities.

It called for the implementation of punitive sanctions on the entire colonial framework and those who backed it and incited such savage violence and terrorism by Israeli officials before it is too late.

Furthermore, the Ministry urges the International Criminal Court to swiftly assume its duties in this matter, stressing that halting the genocidal war against our people and ensuring their international protection is an essential precondition for affording them the right to self-determination with freedom and dignity.