RAMALLAH – Extremist vandals early Tuesday carried a “price tag” attacks near the West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli and Palestinian sources said. The sources said that the vandals set fire to a car belonging to resident Suheil Mohammed Braigheith in the town of Beit Ommar to the north of Hebron. The sources added that the vandals spray painted it with the words “A good Arab is a dead Arab” and “revenge for Yitzhar,” referring to a settlement in the northern West Bank where the Israel demolished several structures in November and in 2011. The Israeli army said that it views seriously acts of this nature. Israeli police opened an investigation into the incident. No arrests were reported. “Price tag” refers to acts of vandalism and violence perpetrated by extremist Jewish settlers targeting Palestinians in the West Bank but also Christian sites, usually carried out in retaliation to the evacuation of West Bank settlements by Israeli forces. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Qosra, to the southeast of Nablus, and attacked the residents' property, the second of its kind in less than a week. Ghassan Daghlas, a senior Palestinian official in charge of the Israeli settlement file in northern West Bank, said that the settles surrounded the home of Abdulmajeed Hassan. Daghlas added that settlers smashed the windows of the home. He added that clashes erupted between the villagers and the settlers. He added that the Israeli forces arrived at the area and fired tear gas canisters at the Palestinians who resisted the settlers. No injuries from both sides were reported. The official said that the settlers destroyed some 200 olive trees at the outskirts of the village. The Israeli Knesset Member Eitan Cabel of Labor party held Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responsible for the settlers' attacks. Cabel said in response that that Netanyahu has refrained from rooting out the phenomenon of extremists setting fire to the West Bank over the past four years. The Israeli MK said that “this is another success of Netanyahu's, in leading us to international isolation and the loss of rule of law…” In a related development, the Jewish-dominated Jerusalem municipality demolished a Palestinian home in the East Jerusalem's neighborhood of Al-Issawiya saying it was “illegally built.” Ahmed Al-Rowaidhi, the chief of Al-Quds Unit at the Palestinian Presidency, said that inspectors from the municipality accompanied by Israeli police and Border Guard officers demolished the 145 square meters home claiming that the owner Ra'fat Tariq Al-Eisawi was not in possession of a valid construction license. Al-Rowaidhi added that the municipality also demolished three agricultural installations owned by the Dari and Obeid families in the town under the same pretexts. The policy of house demolitions and settlement building in East Jerusalem is being used by the Israeli authorities and Jewish-dominated Jerusalem municipality to increase Jewish presence and manipulate the composition of the population in order to gain more control over the city prior to final status talks with the Palestinian Authority. The developments come as a new Israeli poll found that 83 percent of Israeli Jews do not believe that a withdrawal to the pre-'67 lines, division of Jerusalem would end Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
