Settlers torch construction site in Palestinian village

Neighboring Israeli settlers and Palestinians traded accusations of arson, with the settlers’ attack caught on film, after fields near and inside their towns went up in flames in the northern West Bank on Wednesday.

Shortly after 4:30 p.m., Israel Fire and Rescue Services said it responded to a report of a large brush fire outside the Givat Ronen outpost, which quickly spread due to the wind and topography of the area. A fire service spokesman said that locals reported having seen Palestinians from neighboring Burin setting fire to the field outside Givat Ronen before fleeing back to their village.

Four fire squads and dozens of volunteers who arrived at the scene managed to gain control of the blaze after roughly two hours.

During that time, however, Palestinians from Burin filmed ten masked settlers descending from Givat Ronen, hurling stones at a construction site on the edge of the village before setting an adjacent field on fire and fleeing back toward their outpost.

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A spokesman for the Yesh Din rights group, which distributed the footage, said Burin residents had been aware of a fire that had been set an hour earlier near Givat Ronen, but explained that it had been ignited on fields belonging to their village and therefore could not have been started by one of their own inhabitants.

A police spokesman did not immediately respond to a query as to whether officers were probing the two fires as arson attacks.