On February 26, a mob of hundreds of Israeli settlers rampaged through the West Bank village of Huwara, home to about seven thousand Palestinians, sowing terror and wreaking havoc. They chased residents with submachine guns and stabbed and assaulted others with metal rods and rocks. They set houses ablaze, broke doors and smashed windows, torched cars, burned stores, set fire to crops and trees, and killed sheep.

Israeli soldiers stood by and watched. Eyewitnesses related that the army was there to protect and support the settlers. Relatives of a Palestinian man killed during the rampage said that he was shot by Israeli soldiers as the family struggled to defend themselves from the rioters.

After seventeen hours of unceasing violence, the village resembled an abandoned battlefield, engulfed in smoke. Hundreds of Palestinians lay injured.