The violence last week in Kafr Malik, in the West Bank, comes amid a surge in assaults by Israeli settlers. It also set off a chain of violence in the area.The New York Times reports that as the sun was setting over Kafr Malik, a peaceful Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, a mother was putting her newborn to sleep in a ground-floor bedroom of the Afeef family’s home. Meanwhile, another relative arrived with her four young children in a car.
However, the tranquility of the village was soon shattered when a group of Israelis, many of them masked, descended upon the village on foot and in vehicles, according to witnesses and local officials. The attackers threw Molotov cocktails and set homes and cars on fire, causing chaos and destruction.
The Israeli military released a statement acknowledging that dozens of Israeli civilians had set Palestinian property ablaze. This incident is just one of many in a recent surge of settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, where approximately 500,000 Israelis live among three million Palestinians.
According to the United Nations, there has been a sharp increase in settler attacks, with over 220 Palestinians injured in the first five months of 2025. In addition, a Palestinian man was killed by settlers on June 19. The violence in Kafr Malik is a stark reminder of the ongoing tensions and conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians in the region.
The Afeef family’s home was left with fire damage and graffiti in Hebrew, including the words “vengeance” and “two years,” as well as the names of two Israeli victims of a 2023 shooting by Palestinians. This attack serves as a painful reminder of the cycle of violence and retaliation that continues to plague the region.
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