Palestinian officials and a local parish priest say Israeli settlers impeded efforts to fight a substantial wildfire near Taybeh, a predominantly Christian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, late on Tuesday.
Father Bashar Fawadleh, the parish priest of Taybeh, told local authorities that settlers fired shots and encircled people attempting to bring a water tanker to the flames. Nael al-Azza, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority Civil Defence, said the Israeli military also temporarily stopped civil defence teams from reaching the blaze while security coordination was arranged.
According to Fawadleh and al-Azza, firefighters were ultimately able to access the site and extinguish the fire, but settlers continued to try to obstruct their work.
Israel's military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the incident.
On Wednesday, smoke could still be seen rising from a wide area of burned hillside surrounding the village. Fawadleh said he believed the blaze was the result of arson, but he did not identify any suspected perpetrators.
"What we are experiencing is not a series of isolated incidents, but an ongoing pattern of intimidation and unjustified violence that undermines our fundamental right to safety, security, and dignity," Fawadleh said in a statement.
Taybeh is among the few remaining Christian villages in the West Bank, a region that, together with Jerusalem, is home to roughly 50,000 Palestinian Christians whose community traces back centuries in a landscape that contains many of Christianity's most important holy sites. The village drew notable religious visits last year from the Greek Orthodox patriarch and the Roman Catholic cardinal of Jerusalem.
The incident comes as tensions have risen across the West Bank. A U.N. inquiry released on Tuesday found that Israeli authorities were directly involved in settler attacks that have killed, injured and displaced Palestinians in the territory. Israel's mission in Geneva rejected the findings. Israeli officials say their military and police forces are responsible for maintaining security in the West Bank and condemn any form of violence.
Demographic and territorial arrangements in the West Bank complicate emergency response. Around 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 3.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories captured from Jordan in the 1967 war that Palestinians view as part of a future state. Governance in the West Bank has been divided since the 1993 Oslo Accords into areas with differing levels of Palestinian and Israeli control.
Parts of Taybeh fall within Area B, where the Palestinian Authority administers civil matters but security responsibility requires coordination with Israeli authorities. Palestinian officials say the movement and deployment of Palestinian emergency responders into Area B usually require prior arrangements with Israeli security bodies. Although the Palestinian Authority maintains a Civil Defence centre in Taybeh, al-Azza said Israeli forces prevented the centre's crews from accessing the fire scene until the necessary security coordination had been completed.
The episode in Taybeh illustrates the operational challenges faced by Palestinian emergency services operating under constraints tied to security coordination and competing claims of control. Local religious leaders framed the interference as part of a broader pattern of intimidation affecting community safety and dignity. Authorities on all sides have exchanged denials and criticisms around responsibility for security and the handling of settler-related violence.
Further details about the origin of the fire and the identities of those who may have set it were not disclosed by the priest or civil defence officials. The sequence of events described by local sources reflects both immediate disruption to firefighting efforts and broader concerns about civilian protection and access for emergency responders in the West Bank.