Two cars were set aflame and graffiti was sprayed on the wall in Deir Jarir,
east of Ramallah, around 2 a.m. on Tuesday.
The IDF and the
non-governmental group B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human
Rights in the Occupied Territories, assumed that the perpetrators were Jewish
extremists who carried out a “price tag” attack.
On a wall next to one of
the torched cars, vandals spraypainted the following statement in large, red
Hebrew letters: “Jewish blood is not cheap. Tapuah is Kahane.”
They
appeared to be referencing a Palestinian knife attack against a Jewish boy, 17,
at Tapuah junction in the West Bank last week. Many supporters of the late Rabbi
Meir Kahane live at the nearby Kfar Tapuah settlement.
The IDF said it
viewed attacks such as the one in Deir Jarir very seriously and warned that they
inflamed tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, and
distracted the army from its primary mission of fighting terrorism.
On
Monday, Dani Dayan, the outgoing chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities
in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, warned that such attacks imperiled the
future of the settlement movement.
Separately, on Tuesday, two soldiers
were lightly wounded by Palestinian stone-throwers in the West
Bank.
Palestinians also threw a Molotov cocktail at a military vehicle
near Nablus.