Israel Arrests 4 After Jewish Extremist Attack in West Bank

Middle East|Israel Arrests 4 After Jewish Extremist Attack in Occupied West Bank

The Israeli police said four Israelis had been arrested after dozens of masked civilians attacked Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Tuesday and set fire to property, in an assault the authorities labeled “acts of extremist violence.”

The Israeli attackers burst into a Palestinian industrial zone between the West Bank cities of Nablus and Tulkarem, torching vehicles, said Monjed al-Juneidi, one of the owners of a warehouse in the zone for dairy products.

“They arrived prepared and organized, with incendiary material,” he said.

Mr. al-Juneidi said that the company’s 25 employees in the area had taken shelter inside the warehouse, and that the marauders had smashed windows in an attempt to break inside.

The assailants also beat several Palestinians who lived nearby, who were rushed to Nablus for medical treatment, according to Ghassan Daghlas, the Palestinian governor of the district. The Israeli military said four Palestinians had been evacuated for treatment.

The attackers later fled to a nearby Israeli industrial zone, where some of them set upon Israeli soldiers, damaging a military vehicle, the Israeli military said.

Israel’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, was helping investigate the assault, according to the police, who did not immediately identify the suspects.

International monitors say assaults by extremist settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank, which skyrocketed in parallel with the war in Gaza, have escalated in recent weeks.

The assaults have also increased substantially in recent weeks during the yearly olive harvest, as Palestinians head to the fields to gather produce. Over the weekend, Israeli settlers wielding stones and clubs assaulted a group of Palestinians who had sought to harvest olives from their groves. A Reuters journalist and a security adviser were also assaulted, according to the news agency.

“We used to see them attack in bands of three or four,” said Mr. Daghlas, the Nablus governor. “Now they’re in crowds.”

According to the United Nations, 264 settler attacks in October caused casualties, property damage or both — the highest monthly toll in nearly two decades. The U.N.’s humanitarian affairs office in Jerusalem, which collected the data, warned of “a sharp rise in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, both in frequency and severity.”

Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups often say that the Israeli government turns a blind eye to the violence. They say Israeli soldiers and police who disperse the clashes frequently leave without detaining the assailants or arrest only Palestinians.

And relatively few of the alleged Israeli perpetrators are ever indicted, let alone convicted, rights groups say.

Mr. al-Juneidi, the warehouse owner, later accompanied the Israeli police and military as they examined the scene. He said he hoped they brought the perpetrators to justice, but noted that this rarely happens.

Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group that examined more than 1,700 police investigations into offenses committed by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank from 2005 to 2024, found that more than 93 percent of cases were closed with no indictment filed.

Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, condemned the assailants for attacking “civilians and Israeli soldiers,” saying they had crossed “a red line.” He said that the attacks had been carried by a “violent and dangerous few.”

The assaults even drew criticism from one of Israel’s top settler leaders, Israel Ganz, the head of the Yesha Council, a settler umbrella organization. Mr. Ganz condemned the attack.

“I back up the Israeli military and the police in arresting the anarchists who harmed soldiers and civilians,” Mr. Ganz said in a statement. “Anyone who takes the law into their own hands and harms others should be punished under the law.”