Israeli paramilitary settler militias invaded the Palestinian village of Huwwara on Sunday night, torching hundreds of Palestinian homes and cars, setting most of the village on fire.
Israeli soldiers were present during the attack but refused to intervene to stop the paramilitary assault on Palestinian civilians. Palestinian civilians, running for their lives out of their burning homes, begged the Israeli soldiers to stop the Israeli settlers, but they refused.
Instead of stopping the unbridled arson attack, the Israeli military decided to launch their own invasion of the entire district of Nablus.
The Israeli military, which controls all Palestinian areas of the West Bank, and rules the Palestinians under martial law, sent two additional battalions to patrol the streets and ransack Palestinian civilian homes in the Nablus area.
The army also set up ‘mobile checkpoints’ on several roads to the city of Nablus, and searched Palestinian cars, causing severe delays for workers and students.
The Israeli Military Minister, Yoav Galant, ordered increased security in Israeli colonial settlements and Jewish-only apartheid roads in the West Bank.
In addition, Galant decided to increase the state of alert in Jerusalem and on the border with Gaza, claiming that the increased measures, and collective punishment of Palestinian civilians, were meant to ‘stop any additional attacks’ by Palestinian fighters.
One unnamed Israeli official told the Israeli news channel 12 that he is concerned that “the wave of operations and settler attacks will turn into an intifada, and we will find ourselves in a tsunami of terror.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli paramilitary colonizers invaded the village of Hawara and set fire to more than 100 houses.
Palestinian firefighters and civilians worked hard to put out the fires. The preliminary assessment of damage found that at least 100 cars were burned. 35 houses were completely burned. 40 houses were partially burned.
In a separate but related incident, also on Sunday night, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian civilian, Sameh Aktash, 37, in Za’tara village in the northern West Bank.
According to the Israeli Channel 12, the Israeli army is considering setting up barriers around the city of Nablus, fully encircling the city with a wall, making it an imprisoned city like the city of Qalqilia.
The Palestinian city of Qalqilia, in the northwestern part of the West Bank, has been completely enclosed and encircled by the Israeli Wall since 2003.
It is worth mentioning that the colonizers also attacked dozens of homes in several villages and towns near Nablus, including Za’atara, Beita, Burin, Asira Al-Qibliya, and Einabus, causing damage to many homes and cars.
Earlier Sunday, Israeli sources the death of two Israeli colonizers who were shot from a passing Palestinian car in Huwwara town, south of Nablus, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.
The two were later identified as two Israeli colonizers are siblings, Hillel Menachem Yaniv, 22, and Yagel Yaakov Yaniv, 20, who lived in the nearby illegal Har Bracha colony.
