Extremists attack two Palestinian villages in price tag attacks

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Jewish extremists  carried out two ‘price tag’ attacks in Palestinian villages in less than 24 hours.

Three cars and the outside wall of a mosque in Burka, a village near Ramallah, were vandalized early Thursday morning.

The attack appears to be in retribution for the evacuation the previous day of a West Bank outpost, as well as for the murder last month of an Israeli soldier by a Palestinian former co-worker.

“Ge’olat Zion loves Tomer Hazan” was written on the wall of the mosque. Hazan’s body was found last month in a well near the Palestinian city of Kalkilya where he was murdered by a former co-worker from a central Israel restaurant.

The Ge’olat Zion outpost, made up of five families, was evacuated early on Wednesday, and all permanent structures at the outpost destroyed.

Price tag refers to the strategy that extremist settlers and their supporters have adopted to exact retribution for settlement freezes and demolitions or Palestinian attacks on Jews.

On Wednesday afternoon, Israeli extremists attacked an elementary school in Jalud, a Palestinian village about 20 miles south of Nablus. Students reportedly locked themselves in classrooms. Five cars also were vandalized and Palestinians reported that 400 olive trees also were burned.

Four Israelis were arrested in connection with the attack.

The attacks come days after Jerusalem police announced that they had arrested 14 Jewish youths accused of carrying out price tag attacks in Jerusalem.