Settlers have carried out more violent attacks on Palestinian areas in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, March 23, burning buildings, homes and vehicles, and beating and pepper spraying Palestinians attempting to stop them. The attacks are just the latest by settlers, and came on the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim festival of Ramadan.
Hebrew graffiti (reading: “Binyamin”) on the walls of a burned house following an attack by settlers in Jalud village, south of Nablus in the on occupied West Bank, March 22, 2026 (Photo: Palestinian social networks)
On Sunday, at least nine Palestinians have been injured as settlers rampaged through towns and villages in the occupied West Bank for a second night in a row. A 45-year-old man was shot in the foot late on Sunday during a confrontation with settlers in Deir al-Hatab, east of Nablus, the WAFA news agency reported. Earlier, Israeli settlers set fire to homes and cars in two areas south of Jenin and vandalized property across the occupied West Bank.
Simultaneous attacks took place on Saturday night in at least six communities, including the villages of Silat ad-Dhahr and al-Fandaqumiya, both near Jenin; in Jalud and Salfit, both south of Nablus; and in the agricultural regions of Masafer Yatta and the Jordan Valley.
WAFA reported that homes and cars were set ablaze, Palestinians were pepper-sprayed, and at least five people were wounded in the assaults on Monday morning. The attacks came after settlers in the illegal Israeli settlement of Elon Moreh held a funeral for 18-year-old Yehuda Sherman, who was killed in a collision with a Palestinian vehicle in an area north of the villages attacked. During the funeral for Sherman, racist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says during a speech that the far-right government is working to “collapse” the Palestinian Authority. “We are going in their path [of Sherman and his associates] to collapse the authority of evil and terror called the Palestinian Authority,” says Smotrich at the funeral.
Although settler violence has been constant over past decades, it has intensified recently as the Israeli far-right government pushes forward with new settlements and has increased since Israel and the US launched their war on Iran on February 28.
Hadash lawmakers condemn widespread attacks by settlers on Palestinians in some 35 locations across the West Bank on last days. Hadash MK Ayman Odeh calls the events “nights of fire” and Hadash MK Ofer Cassif comparing the ongoing wave of violence to Kristallnacht. “Kristallnacht has become the daily reality in the lives of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank under the auspices of the occupation army,” Cassif says, referring in a post on X to the 1938 Nazi pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria, in which synagogues, Jewish homes and businesses were destroyed, and thousands were assaulted and arrested.
Odeh writes in a post on X, “Settlers carried out an expansive pogrom lasting more than six hours, harming dozens of villages, attacking dozens of Palestinians, and not one of them was arrested.” “If the army wanted to stop terrorism, it would be able to do so within days,” he alleges. “What is happening across the West Bank is not an accident; it is a policy of terrorism and ethnic cleansing, with the backing of the government and the protection of the army.”
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=33304
