Drone Footage Captures Attempted Arson Terror Attack in Gush Etzion

In Givat Ma'aleh Tadehar near the settlement of Mizad in the Gush Etzion bloc, a suspicious figure was spotted exiting the nearby Palestinian village of Sa'ir just before the start of the Sabbath. Security personnel quickly deployed a drone which recorded in real time an Arab woman setting multiple fires by igniting dry vegetation and throwing additional dry thorns into the flames, attempting to spread the fire toward the hill under windy conditions. Upon realizing she was detected, the woman fled back to her village. Residents promptly alerted security forces and extinguished the fire before it could spread further. No arrests have been reported so far.

The Givat HaHazit and Shavim management organization, which oversees several hills in the West Bank, noted that thermal drones were only recently provided to the community for area surveillance. They credited the drone footage with preventing a serious arson attack and emphasized that without this evidence, some in the security establishment might have denied the intentional nature of the fire. The organization condemned the arson as a form of terror, highlighting a recent incident where an entire settlement was engulfed in flames, narrowly avoiding casualties. They called on the security forces to treat the arson threat with full seriousness.