Jewish youth wounded in West Bank stoning near town vandalized in hate crime

Israeli police were on Friday investigating a series of incidents near the West Bank village of Hawara where Palestinians threw stones at an Israeli vehicle, wounding a 13-year-old boy, hours after residents woke up to find several cars with tires slashed and a tombstone graffitied with a Star of David.

Magen David Adom emergency medics evacuated the teen to a nearby hospital after he was hit in the face with a stone. He was reported to be lightly wounded.

This was the second stone-throwing incident in as many days near the village, according to a spokeswoman for the Samaria Regional Council, whose residents frequently drive on the main Hawara highway to reach Jerusalem and other towns to the south.

On Thursday, a 23-year-old resident of the northern West Bank settlement of Itamar was evacuated to a nearby hospital with light injuries.

Bookended by the stone-throwing attacks, the apparent hate crime saw eight vehicles with their tires slashed, several homes with Hebrew phrases daubed on their outer walls, and the desecration of the cemetery in the middle of Hawara. One of the phrases graffitied at the scene read, “Rotten government, when will you fight the enemy” — an apparent indication of the far-right activists’ contempt for Israeli government policies in response to Palestinian violence.

Security camera footage captured at least three figures wearing all black walking up to vehicles in the middle of Hawara and slowly slashing tires one by one.

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So-called price tag attacks, usually limited to arson and graffiti but sometimes including physical assaults and even murder, have been carried out by Jewish extremists against non-Jews and IDF targets in the wake of Palestinian terror attacks or Israeli government decisions the extremists oppose.

In December, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a report that showed a 69 percent increase in settler attacks on Palestinians in 2018 compared to 2017.

Earlier this week, the Defense Ministry granted approval for construction of a new road that will bypass Hawara where Israelis have periodically been targeted while waiting in traffic.

The road stretching from the Tapuah Junction to the Yitzhar Junction will run east of Route 60, the West Bank’s main, frequently congested north-south artery, and will shorten the commute for Israelis living in northern West Bank settlements.

Last month, an Israeli traveling through Hawara shot dead a Palestinian man who, according to the IDF, attempted to break into his car and stab him and his daughter who was sitting in the back seat.

The road is part of a broader plan settler leaders have put forward to the Defense Ministry for bypass roads throughout the West Bank that will ease traffic and limit possible friction between Israelis and Palestinians.

Opponents of such bypass roads argue that they more prominently serve the settler population and are used as a tool to expand Israeli presence beyond the Green Line. The Hawara bypass, for example, will be built on land originally belonging to the Palestinian villages of Hawara and Beita that was seized by the IDF for security reasons.