On Monday evening, the night of Purim, a group of Chabad chassidim arrived in the town of Huwara, not far from Shechem (Nablus) in Samaria, to visit soldiers posted there and lift their spirits in honor of the festival.
Arabs watching the festivities, which included the reading of the Megillah followed by singing and dancing, filmed them, but then the situation turned for the worse, with local Arabs gathering around, incited by speeches from the mosques. Stones started flying, first from the Arabs and then apparently from some of the Jews as well, leading to property damage. Palestinian-Arab sources reported either four or six people wounded. Jewish sources reported that the Arabs were armed with baseball bats and metal rods.

Chabad (Lubavitch) chassidim customarily visit soldiers in bases and posts all over the country during Purim and other Jewish festivals and this was not the first time that they visited Huwara, although possibly it was the first time that they did so at a time of such heightened tensions, just a week after a deadly terrorist attack in the town which claimed the lives of Hallel and Yagel Yaniv Hy”d.
On Tuesday morning, the Israeli security forces announced that they would be investigating documentation of a resident of Samaria smashing the windows of an Arab-owned vehicle in Huwara, and that they would also be investigating a video of soldiers dancing with “settlers.” No arrests have been made.
The IDF released a statement following the night’s events, referring to the video of the dancing, saying: “The incident that was documented in a video lasted a number of minutes. The circumstances are being clarified. The conduct of the soldiers is inconsistent with what is expected of soldiers in operational activity.”