Houses covered in soot from the burning cars. Photos courtesy of local residents
On Monday, 4 November 2024, at around 3:00 A.M., security cameras captured settlers arriving at the northern side of the village of al-Birah and setting 18 cars on fire. Some of the cars burnt down completely. The settlers fled when residents who were woken up by the noise came outside. The residents called the fire department and began putting out the fire themselves. A fire truck arrived about 30 minutes later and finished the job.
Ihab a-Ziben, 53, a father of four, recounted in a testimony he gave B’Tselem researcher Mohammad Romaneh that day:
Last night, around 3:00 A.M., while I was in my apartment, I heard people on the road across from us. I looked out the window and saw settlers taking off their shirts and covering their faces with them, then pouring flammable liquid into cars belonging to neighborhood residents and setting them on fire. I grabbed a fire extinguisher right away and shouted to the neighbors to come help me put out the fire. By the time I got to the cars, the settlers had already fled, and I saw them leaving on the dirt road and in the wadi. The other residents and I called a fire truck and started putting out the fire with extinguishers and water. We managed to get it under control and prevent it from spreading to the houses. The fire truck arrived about 30 minutes after the fire started and put it out. We discovered that the settlers had torched 18 cars, some in our neighborhood and some in a neighborhood about 10 meters away from us. The smoke did get to the houses, of course, covering windows and stone cladding in soot. It was a tough and scary experience for us and our children, unlike anything we’d ever faced before. We were shaken. Thank God the fire didn’t spread into the houses.
The settlers setting cars on fire. Still from video footage
Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations. B’Tselem strives to end this regime, as that is the only way forward to a future in which human rights, democracy, liberty and equality are ensured to all people, both Palestinian and Israeli, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Since the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Israel has acted in a coordinated and deliberate manner to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip, committing genocide against its residents. In light of Israel’s actions in Gaza, the public statements made by Israeli decision-makers, and the international community’s failure to take effective action, there is a serious risk that the Israeli regime will expand the genocide to other areas under its control—first and foremost, the West Bank.
B’Tselem calls on the Israeli public and the international community to use every tool available under international law to bring an immediate end to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
