Thabet Bashir, the head of Jen Safout council, said that occupiers from nearby illegal settlement outpost of Havat Gilad also sprayed a Star of David sign and the words "Price Tag" on the wall of one of the village's buildings.

This is the phrase used by militant Jewish settlers to warn that they will exact a price for any actions they perceive to be against their presence in Israel.

He added that "the residents saw four occupiers pouring gasoline on the cars and setting them ablaze before fleeing the scene. According to Bashir, the Israeli forces witnessed the act but did not intervene. He notified that immediately after the arsonists left the village, electricity to the village and its surroundings was cut, which, he said, raises suspicions whether the Israeli authorities were trying to help the perpetrators flee the scene.

Upon receiving word of the incident, the civil administration was quick to contact the heads of the village in order to maintain calm. Civil administration officials were sent out to erase the graffiti scrawled on the wall.

The rightist Israeli Channel 7 quoted a right-wing Jewish activist as saying that the attack on Jen Safout "is a continuation of the treatment of Arab attacks on settlers in the area. We will not be anyone's victim. Throwing stones and Molotov cocktails needs to stop."

On Wednesday, occupiers from Yitzhar settlement torched three cars in the village of Hewara, south of Nablus. There, too, provocative graffiti was spray-painted on Bilal Bin Rabah mosque.

The occupiers have increased their acts of harassment against the Palestinians in the West Bank after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced 10-month halt to settlement construction in West Bank in December. Netanyahu said the move was in a bid to revive the peace talks with the Palestinians.