Settlers said to vandalize Palestinian cars in apparent West Bank hate crime

Two cars belonging to Palestinians were vandalized overnight in an apparent hate crime east of Hebron in the West Bank, Palestinian media outlets reported Tuesday.

Ali Tayseer Jaber told the Palestinian Authority’s Wafa news agency that several settlers came to his property, smashed the windows of vehicles belonging to him and his brother, and spray-painted Stars of David on them.

Anti-Palestinian vandalism by Jewish extremists is a common occurrence in the West Bank.

Incidents of vandalism against Palestinians and Israeli security forces are commonly referred to as “price tag” attacks, with perpetrators claiming they are retaliation for Palestinian violence or government policies seen as hostile to the settler movement.

Arrests of perpetrators are exceedingly rare and rights groups lament that convictions are even more unusual, with the majority of charges in such cases being dropped.

On Monday, a spokesperson from the Shin Bet said the internal security service and police have launched an investigation into the killing of a 27-year-old Palestinian man, allegedly by Israeli settlers, in the West Bank over the weekend.

Reports of nationalist crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank surged at the end of January, following several terror attacks.

The incidents come at a time of rising violence in the region, with the Israeli military pressing on with an anti-terror offensive in the West Bank which has netted more than 2,500 arrests, left 171 Palestinians dead in 2022, and another 46 since the beginning of the year.

Many of them were killed while carrying out attacks or during clashes with security forces, though some were uninvolved civilians.

The operation was launched to deal with a series of attacks that left 31 people in Israel dead in 2022 and 11 more since the beginning of this year.