The hourslong rampage through the town of Hawara and earlier shooting of two settlers came as Israeli and Palestinian officials met in Jordan in a bid to address escalating violence.
Dozens of Israeli settlers embarked on a violent rampage through a Palestinian town and nearby villages on Sunday night, burning homes and cars, and killing a man.
The hours-long rampage through the town of Hawara in the occupied West Bank, the worst such violence in years, followed the shooting of two Israeli settlers by a Palestinian gunman earlier Sunday.
The day’s events laid bare the rightward shift in Israeli politics and the fragility of U.S.-led efforts to deescalate tensions after months of intensifying violence in the region.
Images from the streets of Hawara showed the destruction, with the charred grey skeletons of dozens of cars near to two-story buildings with their windows smashed. One video shared widely on social media Sunday and geolocated appeared to show a crowd of Israeli settlers praying while stood in front of a burning building.
A 37-year-old Palestinian man, Sameh Hamdallah Mahmoud Aqtash, was shot and killed by Israeli fire, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Two other people were shot and wounded, one person was stabbed, and another was beaten with an iron bar, the Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said, according to the Associated Press. Almost 100 other Palestinians were being treated for tear gas inhalation, the news agency added.
Israeli’s military said Monday it had dispatched several hundred more troops to the area, and that a manhunt was underway for the gunman who killed the Israeli settlers and the gunman who killed the Palestinian man. Ten Israelis were arrested after the Hawara rampage, the military said.
The settlers killed on Sunday were named as brothers Hillel Menachem Yaniv, 21, who the Israel Defense Forces confirmed was an IDF soldier enrolled in a yeshiva program after serving in the navy — and his brother, Yagel Yaakov Yaniv, 19, from the settlement of Har Bracha.
“A terrible tragedy occurred today,” Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said of the brother’s killings in a video statement posted to Twitter Sunday, adding that Israeli soldiers were in pursuit of the gunman.
“May God avenge them,” Netanyahu said. He added that: “I ask even when the blood is boiling, not to take the law in one’s hands.”
Israel’s former defense minister, Benny Gantz, said the revenge attacks in Hawara “should shame every person and every Jew in particular.”
“This is not our way,” Gantz tweeted Sunday, urging the country’s leaders to publicly call for calm.
While some denounced the rampage, other members of the ruling coalition — seen as perhaps the most right-wing in Israel’s history —appeared to praise Sunday’s violence as deterrence against Palestinian attacks.
“I look favorably on what happened in Hawara,” said Tzvika Foghel, a lawmaker from the ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party, in an interview with IDF radio. “The result is deterrence, the army should do it and not the civilians. I want to see every place where terrorists come out burning.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he held the Israeli government responsible for what he called “the terrorist acts carried out by settlers under the protection of the occupation forces tonight.”
Sunday’s violence drew international condemnation, with U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price saying that the shooting attack and the rampage “underscore the imperative to immediately de-escalate tensions in words and deeds.”
The rampage occurred on the same day that the Jordanian government hosted talks aimed at reducing tensions ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The talks, between Jordanian, Egyptian, Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. officials, led to a joint statement that “reaffirmed the necessity of committing to de-escalation on the ground and to prevent further violence.”
Nearly a year of violence has killed over 200 Palestinians and more than 40 Israelis in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, according to Associated Press. A deadly Israeli raid on the West Bank city of Nablus killed at least 11 Palestinians last week, and left scores more wounded.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, territories the Palestinians seek for their hoped-for independent state, in the 1967 Mideast war.