Israeli activist Alon Lee Green told Al Jazeera that the soldiers were supporting “terrorist” settlers.
In Qusra, Palestinian families have spent days confined to their homes as settlers sought to force them out.
Qusai Abu Rida said Israeli settlers moved from a tent erected outside his home to a nearby valley on Friday, while Israeli regime forces positioned themselves around his house and two other Palestinian homes that settlers had blockaded.
Abu Rida said he feared the settlers would return after the forces withdrew and attempt to take over the home owned by his Palestinian American brother in Ohio.
“I just don’t know when this will end,” he said.
Meanwhile, activists supporting the Palestinian families marched toward the besieged homes on Friday to replenish their dwindling supplies of food and water.
Abu Rida said Israeli forces had repeatedly removed the settlers, only for them to return and reestablish their positions after the troops withdrew.
“It’s like a kids’ game, like cat and mouse,” Ziv Stahl, the executive director of the Israeli rights group Yesh Din, said.
“It’s clearly not a matter of capability but a matter of will.”
The confrontation is the latest episode in a wave of settler violence across the occupied West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war.
The Israeli regime’s military said Qusra, located roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Nablus, was a closed military zone, while both the military and police referred questions about the situation to each other.
More than 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and east Al-Quds, where Israeli settlements are overwhelmingly considered illegal by the international community.
The violence has intensified as the Zionist regime has approved more than 100 new settlements.
Extremist settlers routinely enter Palestinian towns, clashing with residents and burning homes, mosques and cars.
Palestinians and rights groups say the Israeli regime’s policies have made it increasingly difficult to restrain settlers, who are rarely punished for attacks.