DayofPal –A one-month-old baby girl was sleeping inside her house when more than 150 Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Awarta, south of Nablus, setting fire to homes and vehicles.
The infant narrowly escaped death after her family rushed into the flames and rescued her from her crib as thick smoke and fire engulfed the home.
Her grandfather, recounting the terrifying moments, said: “She was sleeping peacefully in her bed when they attacked the house… We pulled her out from between the flames.”
A widely circulated video shows the baby girl looking at her grandfather with an innocent smile amid the charred walls of the family home, a scene that has sparked widespread outrage across Palestine and beyond.
The arson attack on Friday evening is part of a broader wave of coordinated settler violence in villages south and west of Nablus, including Tal, following earlier clashes amd killing of four Palestinians.
Palestinian residents reported that Israeli occupation forces provided protection to the armed settlers during the assaults.
Despite the trauma, the baby’s grandfather delivered a message of steadfastness: “We are here to stay. We aren’t afraid. No matter what they do, we won’t leave our land or go anywhere.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, strongly condemned the surge in settler violence.
She stated that armed Israelis are carrying out bloody attacks against unarmed Palestinians, often with direct support from Israeli soldiers, describing the assaults as “terrorism” and calling for immediate international protection for Palestinian civilians.
Israeli Knesset member Ofer Cassif blamed the Israeli occupation authorities for enabling “the highest degree of terrorism,” accusing successive Israeli governments of ignoring warnings and actively supporting settler violence through military complicity.
These attacks come amid a sharp rise in settler aggression across the northern West Bank, particularly around Nablus.
Rights organizations have repeatedly documented how Israeli forces routinely protect settlers while suppressing Palestinian self-defense, allowing extremists to terrorize villages with near-total impunity.
For Palestinian families in villages surrounding Nablus, such as Awarta, Tal, and others, daily life has become a constant struggle against armed settler gangs seeking to displace them from their ancestral lands.
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