Settlers Burn Vehicles, Vandalize in Jibiya Village Near Ramallah

Israeli settlers stormed the village of Jibiya north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank overnight, torching Palestinian vehicles and spray-painting hostile, racist slogans on homes and walls, residents and local officials said, in the latest escalation of settler violence sweeping the territory. Villagers were awakened by the smell of smoke and the sound of breaking glass as masked settlers, believed to have descended from nearby illegal outposts, set fire to several parked cars and slashed the tyres of others before fleeing back toward the hilltops under the cover of darkness. Photographs circulated by local activists showed charred vehicle frames, shattered windscreens and Hebrew graffiti scrawled across stone walls, including phrases calling for revenge and the expulsion of Palestinians from their land. No injuries were immediately reported, but residents said Israeli occupation forces stationed at the entrance to the village did not intervene to stop the rampage and arrived only after the attackers had withdrawn. Palestinian officials described the assault as part of a coordinated campaign of intimidation aimed at driving farming communities off lands coveted by the expanding settlement enterprise. The attack on Jibiya follows a sharp surge in settler raids across the northern West Bank governorates of Ramallah, Nablus, Salfit and Ramallah's rural hinterland, where rights groups have documented dozens of incidents in recent weeks involving arson, livestock theft and physical assaults. United Nations monitors have warned that settler violence has reached its highest sustained level in two decades, with attackers operating in near-total impunity and frequently escorted, or shielded, by Israeli soldiers. The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned the latest attack and renewed its call for international protection for civilians under occupation, holding the Israeli government fully responsible for what it described as state-sanctioned terrorism by armed settlers. From Doha, Qatar has repeatedly denounced settler attacks on Palestinian villages as a flagrant violation of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, urging the international community to move beyond verbal condemnation and impose accountability measures on the perpetrators and their political backers. Qatari diplomats have lobbied at the United Nations and through Gulf channels for targeted sanctions against violent settlers, echoing measures already adopted by several Western capitals. The Gulf state, which played a central role in mediating recent ceasefire understandings on Gaza, has consistently linked any wider regional de-escalation to a halt in settlement expansion and settler attacks across the West Bank. Local activists in Jibiya said residents were organising night patrols to protect their homes and called on Palestinian and Arab media to keep a spotlight on what they described as a slow, grinding campaign of displacement unfolding far from the cameras trained on Gaza.