Masked settlers attacked an NBC crew south of Nablus while soldiers filmed nearby made no arrests

Two incidents occurred on Saturday 29 August, in neighbouring locations south of Nablus, and should be kept apart. In Jalud, four members of an NBC News team were interviewing Aida Ahmed Abdullah and her family, who said settlers had driven them from their home. NBC reports that as the crew walked down a hill toward the house, a grey car with Israeli plates reversed up the hill and its occupants attacked Abdullah and the crew with sticks and rocks; Abdullah and crew members were treated for injuries. SBS, using AFP copy, said three NBC staff were attacked and merged the two locations into one event. In Qusra, dozens of masked settlers attacked Palestinian workers with pepper spray and threw rocks at a building; settlers had besieged homes there for weeks and on Saturday entered a Palestinian home with the family inside.

Netanyahu condemned the attacks in what his English statement called “the villages of Kosra and Jalud”, blaming “a handful of rioters who violate the law” who, he said, do injustice to the law-abiding settler public, hinder the IDF and harm Israel’s international standing. The army said soldiers and Border Police “continue to operate in the areas of Qusra and Jalud to prevent further disturbances”. Haaretz reported that soldiers were filmed shielding the building where the Palestinian workers had sheltered and did not detain or identify the masked settlers, despite an existing order criminalising face coverings in the West Bank. Saddam Oday, one of the Palestinians trapped in a house in Qusra, told reporters the military fired tear gas into the home and detained residents; that account is his, and the IDF has not addressed it.

The Saturday violence followed a rarer event on Friday. The Israeli Air Force carried out a drone strike in Jenin, killing three Palestinians. The IDF and Shin Bet said in a joint statement that the target was a senior Hamas operative in the dismantled Jenin network, spotted with two others getting out of a car beside a structure; the Jerusalem Post names him Qais Bitwani, the Times of Israel liveblog Bitawi. France 24 and Al Jazeera both flagged the strike as rare in a territory that has largely been spared the aerial methods used in Gaza. Defence Minister Israel Katz said the Jenin refugee camp had been “cleansed” of militants and infrastructure. The Palestinian Red Crescent said troops delayed its medics and confiscated equipment. The identification of the dead as operatives remains an Israeli claim.

Assessment: “A handful of rioters” is a claim about numbers designed to avoid a claim about enforcement. The measurable fact is the face-covering order: it exists, masked men operated in front of soldiers, and Haaretz reports no one was identified. An order not enforced is a policy signal, not a lapse. Note also who is reporting: NBC is the injured party, which makes its account strong on detail and worth reading carefully on framing, and AFP-derived copy has already fused two villages into one. The Jenin drone strike is the quieter shift — the ceiling on force in the West Bank is being raised while the political language about settler violence stays deliberately small.