‘We’ll come back and kill you’: Palestinians recall horror of deadly settler riot
Residents of Jit say attackers ransacked homes, chasing people and threatening to return later; uncle says slain man was shot in back as some locals attempted to defend village
The Israeli settlers who attacked Hassan Arman’s village of Jit in the West Bank had a simple aim, Arman said, “To burn, kill, or destroy,” all of which took place that night.
Residents on Friday recalled hiding in fear while dozens of settlers ransacked their northern village the night before, burning homes and cars and shooting a young Palestinian man dead.
Locals said more than 100 people took part in the attack, many wearing masks and clad in black, and appeared well-coordinated, dividing into groups armed with guns and others throwing stones and Molotov cocktails.
The rampage drew widespread condemnation, including from inside Israel.
Arman, whose car was destroyed by fire during the attack, said he had “never seen anything like it” in Jit as he opened the charred door of his vehicle.
Inside, everything had melted, leaving just a skeleton of twisted metal.
When the Jewish settlers reached his house, they were “in full uniform, armed with knives, a machine gun, and a silencer,” he said.
A few houses down, Muawiya al-Sada, a 38-year-old father of five, struggled for words as he stood in the scorched remains of his living room. Only the burnt wooden frame of his sofa remained after the cushions and fabric went up in flames.
“After they burned the house there, they came to this house, broke the windows, and threw firebombs — Molotov cocktails — inside,” he said, while shards of glass from his window panes crunched under the weight of his boots.
Sada told Reuters he escaped with his family with only minutes to spare. When he returned, he said the settlers were jeering and taunting him, saying “We will come back and kill you!” and telling him to go to Jordan or Syria.
Sada and his neighbors then heard gunshots which they later learned caused the death of Rasheed Seda, 23.
The Palestinian Authority health ministry said another Palestinian civilian was also critically wounded by the “settlers’ bullets.” Israeli security sources said it was unclear who had shot him.
Sada said following the shooting, “there was a brief period of calm, and then the army entered [the village].”
“I was lucky, it was a matter of minutes between life and death,” Sada said.
Nasser Seda, the head of the local council in Jit, told the Ynet news website that Rasheed, who he is related to, had joined other young locals who had attempted to turn away the attackers.
“If our young people hadn’t gone out to try to repel the settlers, it could have been a much greater disaster,” Seda said.
Mourners in the streets
Crowds gathered for Seda’s funeral on Friday, carrying his body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, through the streets.
At the funeral, his uncle Muhannad Sada told AFP, “A bullet came from behind him and exited the other side, and he was martyred.”
“It was not the army who fired the bullets, but the settlers,” he added.
CCTV footage released by one resident showed masked men in black hoodies emerging from a field, setting fire to a car and breaking into a home, then setting upon a villager when he tried to chase them away.
The army said it dispersed the settlers from Jit, detaining one Israeli civilian, who was eventually released when it turned out he was not involved in the events.
The Palestinian Authority, which has limited sovereignty over part of the West Bank, called the attack “organized state terrorism.”
שופכים חומר דליק על ספה בכניסה לבית, ומציתים: תיעוד נוסף מהפרעות בכפר ג׳ית אמש pic.twitter.com/aVAgaNjwIl
— Carmel Dangor כרמל דנגור (@carmeldangor) August 16, 2024
It was not clear what, if anything, had triggered the violence.
Seda, the Jit local council head, said residents have not had issues with the neighboring settlement of Kedumim, and pointed his finger at the Havat Gilad outpost and Yitzhar settlement, whose residents deliberately try to disturb the lives of those in Jit, he said.
Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council representing Israeli settlements in the northern part of the West Bank, said the extremists who rampaged through Jit on Thursday were mostly not settlers from his area.
“We know that this is a WhatsApp group of fringe, violent youth, most of whom are not even from Samaria. I despise them like most of the country,” he told Kan radio on Friday.
President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack, which drew widespread condemnation from the international community including the United States, the United Nations, France, Germany and Britain.
Notably, the incident was also condemned by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in the nearby settlement of Kedumim. Local settler politicians condemned the attack as well.
Ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir blamed the incident on the policies of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi but still said fighting terror is the sole domain of the military, indicating he viewed the lynch as a civilian counterterrorism action.
The incident came at a tense time for the region, as negotiators spent two days at a summit in Doha trying to hammer out a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages, and in doing so possibly douse threats by Iran and its proxies to attack Israel.
Violence in the West Bank has surged since war broke out on October 7, when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251.
Since October 7, troops have arrested some 4,850 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 1,960 affiliated with Hamas.
According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 630 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 26 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another five members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.
The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA says there have been around 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians since October 7, or around four per day.
The Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report.
