Cars vandalized, house tagged in apparent hate crime against Palestinians

Palestinians in the northern West Bank village of As-Sawiya woke up Monday morning to discover their town had been targeted in an apparent hate crime, with 12 cars vandalized and Hebrew graffiti spray-painted on the wall of a home.

A security camera caught a hooded suspect with a backpack walking up to a vehicle, bending down and slashing its tires. A home nearby was found daubed with a Star of David and the phrase “The nation of Israel lives.”

Police said they had received a report of the incident and were preparing to enter As-Sawiya to collect evidence.

The incident near the Rehelim settlement came against the backdrop of what the Yesh Din rights group says has been a particularly violent three months, during which Palestinian villages were targeted 44 times in so-called price tag attacks.

Of those cases, 21 involved violence against Palestinians while the remainder of the attacks targeted property, according to Yesh Din.

Fourteen of the incidents took place in the Nablus area of the northern West Bank, 10 cases were documented in the Ramallah area of the central West Bank and eight cases were reported in the Hebron area of the southern West Bank.

Despite dozens of hate crimes targeting Palestinians and their property over the past year, arrests of suspects have been exceedingly rare.