UAE orders provision of $3 million to rebuild West Bank village of Huwara

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed has ordered the provision of $3 million to help rebuild the West Bank village of Huwara and support those affected after it was set ablaze by hard-line Jewish settlers.

The initiative, which is in line with the UAE’s humanitarian efforts to support “the Palestinian brotherly people,” will be implemented through Abu Dhabi’s Department of Municipalities and Transport in cooperation with the Emirati Palestinian Friendship Club, state news agency WAM reported on Thursday.

Huwara, a Palestinian village near a major road checkpoint, has become the latest flashpoint between Israelis and Palestinians after months of worsening violence in the occupied West Bank.

Scores of Israeli settlers went on a violent rampage in Huwara last month, setting dozens of cars and homes on fire after two settlers were killed by a Palestinian gunman there.

The rampage prompted international condemnation. But Israel’s government, which is made up of pro-settlement ultranationalists, expressed little outrage and only called on the perpetrators not to take the law into their own hands.

However, some lawmakers went even further, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said Huwara should be “erased” – but by state authorities and not by private citizens. He later backtracked on those remarks.