IDF: Dozens of settler extremists involved in Monday night riots, troops also attacked
Cop who shot two settlers amid attack on Palestinian towns reportedly tells investigators that the masked suspects maced him with pepper spray: ‘I was afraid they would lynch us’

An initial IDF investigation into a settler attack on two West Bank Palestinian villages Monday night found that dozens of assailants were involved, and troops also came under attack.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, the probe found that “dozens of Israeli civilians, some of them masked, arrived at night al-Funduq area… set fire to property and caused damage.”
The IDF said that upon receiving the report, soldiers and police officers were dispatched to the scene.
The assailants involved in the attack on al-Funduq and the adjacent village of Jinsafut “threw stones and attacked the security forces,” the army said.
The head of the IDF Central Command, Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, said Tuesday in a statement, “Any violent riot harms security and the IDF will not allow it.”
The IDF did mention an incident that occurred amid the settler attack, in which a police officer opened fire on two settlers, badly wounding them.
The Justice Ministry’s Department of Internal Police Investigations and the IDF Military Police are jointly investigating the incident.

The police officer reportedly told interrogators that the two settlers were masked, brandishing stones, and were threatening him and other forces. He was released to house arrest after being questioned.
“They sprayed me with pepper spray, I was afraid they would lynch us and I fired a few shots in the air,” he was cited as saying according to Haaretz.
Palestinians say 21 people were wounded in the attacks. No arrests had been made as of early Wednesday.
Israel’s failure to rein in settler violence led the Biden administration to begin issuing sanctions against violent extremists in the West Bank last year. That regime was ended Monday by US President Donald Trump as part of a flurry of executive orders signed on his first day back in office.
On Tuesday, the Palestinian Authority said Trump’s lifting of sanctions on Israeli settlers would incite violence against Palestinians.
“Lifting sanctions on extremist settlers encourages them to commit more crimes against our people,” the Ramallah-based government’s foreign ministry said in a statement, pointing to the violence Monday night.
Moayaad Shaaban, a minister in the Palestinian Authority, similarly said the lifting of sanctions “gives the green light to settlers to commit even more serious crimes.”
He added that, as a result, he feared a “real massacre in one of our villages.”

The PA foreign ministry also criticized a decision by Defense Minister Israel Katz last week to release settlers held in administrative detention, a controversial counterterrorism tool primarily used for Palestinians that allows authorities to hold suspects without trial, warning “against attempts to escalate the situation in the West Bank” to facilitate its annexation by Israel.
Katz tied the move — which was made without the security agency’s input — to the release of Palestinian terror convicts as part of the hostage release and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that took effect Sunday.
The defense minister himself commented Tuesday on administrative detention while denouncing the settler rampage, saying he “strongly condemns any attack and violence against Palestinians” and regretted the shooting of the two Israelis by the police officer. He called on settler leaders to “condemn any violence of this kind.”
“Law enforcement authorities must enforce the law and arrest and prosecute anyone who violates the law. There should be a criminal procedure and not administrative orders, and settlers should be treated the same as [people involved in] any other incident anywhere in the State of Israel,” he said during a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Katz also warned Tuesday of an increasing threat to settlements, stating that “our enemies recognize here now that this is the only arena that is open today,” as the military has ramped up operations in the West Bank to prevent violence from flaring amid the ceasefire in Gaza.
“We are committed and the IDF is committed, in accordance with my directive, to act forcefully to protect all the settlers and settlements against Palestinian terrorism and to act with great force in order to thwart terrorism,” Katz added.
Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.