JERUSALEM (JTA) — Jewish extremists broke into an elementary school and threw stones in one of two “price tag” attacks on Palestinian villages in less than 24 hours.
Israeli media reported that teachers and students at the school in Jalud, a Palestinian village about 20 miles south of Nablus, locked themselves in classrooms during the attack on Wednesday afternoon.
Four Israelis were arrested in connection with the attack.
Also in Jalud, five cars were vandalized and Palestinians reported that 400 olive trees were burned.
The next morning, three cars and the outside wall of a mosque in Burka, a village near Ramallah, were vandalized. The attack appears to be in retribution for the evacuation on Wednesday of a West Bank outpost, as well as for the murder last month of an Israeli soldier by a Palestinian former co-worker. Writings on the wall of the mosque referenced the murder near the Palestinian city of Kalkilya.
The permanent structures of the Ge’olat Zion outpost, made up of five families, were destroyed.
The attacks come days after Jerusalem police said they arrested 14 Jewish youths accused of carrying out price tag attacks in Jerusalem.
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.
