Israeli settlers have been targeting villages on the eastern slopes of Ramallah for months, with the latest attacks turning deadly. Villagers say it's all part of Israel's plans to drive Palestinians out of the area and pave the way for annexation.
July 18, 2025
MONDOWEISS
Villagers in Taybeh put out fires started by Israeli settlers outside the al-Khader Church in Taybeh, northeast of Ramallah, July 7, 2025. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
Five lives in two weeks, and dozens of injured and wounded. The toll of Israeli settler violence on Palestinians has been rising in recent weeks as rampages against Palestinian towns and villages continue to escalate, especially in the region east of Ramallah, in the central occupied West Bank.
On June 25, Israeli settlers killed three Palestinians in the village of Kufr Malik, east of Ramallah. The attack came two days after a 15-year-old teenager from the village was killed by Israeli forces. Last Saturday, July 12, Israeli settlers attacked the village of Sinjil, ten minutes away from Kufr Malik, in the dozens, rampaging through the village. The attack resulted in the killing of two Palestinians, one of them a U.S. citizen.
Sayfollah Musallat, 20, came from his hometown of Mazraa Sharqiyeh, alongside dozens of Palestinians to help the people of Sinjil push back the settlers’ attack. The young man went missing and was found hours later severely beaten. He was pronounced dead shortly after.
Dyaa Karakra, an ambulance driver, was also among the people who came from nearby villages to help the people of Sinjil during the settler attack.
“I was going to recover some wounded in Sinjil, around 15 settlers blocked the way and surrounded the ambulance and began to throw stones. The windows were shattered and the sirens too. I drove through the fields and damaged the ambulance’s undercarriage doing that,” Karakra told Mondoweiss.
“When I arrived at the location where most clashes were taking place, which is a plot of farming land from where settlers advanced into the village, there were dozens of injured,” said Karakra. “The majority were injured in the head and some with fractures, so we began to transfer them to a medical center in Sinjil, but 22 were very seriously injured so we took them to the hospital in Ramallah,” he went on. “The Israeli army didn’t show up throughout the attack and came at the end and dispersed everybody. Some soldiers helped the injured.”
“Soon, we realized that Saif was missing, and we began to look for him in the surrounding area, and found him after two hours in a bush outside of the village,” recalled the ambulance driver, referring to Sayfollah by his nickname. “He was beaten and wounded but not dead, although he had been bleeding for two hours. We carried him on foot through the hills for 15 minutes, and before we reached the village, he died.”
“We also picked up Mohammad Shalabi, 23, who was already dead under an olive tree. He had received a bullet in his back that went through his chest,” Karakra said. “Mohammad worked in a cleaning company, and was preparing to get married soon, while Saif was visiting the town for the summer, before going back to his family who live in Tampa, in the U.S.,” he added.
Both young men were given a mass funeral in Mazraa Sharqiya, where Dyaa Karakra marched with his window-shattered ambulance among hundreds of mourners from all neighboring towns and villages, which have been exposed to settler violence in recent weeks.
Five lives in two weeks, and dozens of injured and wounded. The toll of Israeli settler violence on Palestinians has been rising in recent weeks as rampages against Palestinian towns and villages continue to escalate, especially in the region east of Ramallah, in the central occupied West Bank.
On June 25, Israeli settlers killed three Palestinians in the village of Kufr Malik, east of Ramallah. The attack came two days after a 15-year-old teenager from the village was killed by Israeli forces. Last Saturday, July 12, Israeli settlers attacked the village of Sinjil, ten minutes away from Kufr Malik, in the dozens, rampaging through the village. The attack resulted in the killing of two Palestinians, one of them a U.S. citizen.
Sayfollah Musallat, 20, came from his hometown of Mazraa Sharqiyeh, alongside dozens of Palestinians to help the people of Sinjil push back the settlers’ attack. The young man went missing and was found hours later severely beaten. He was pronounced dead shortly after.
Dyaa Karakra, an ambulance driver, was also among the people who came from nearby villages to help the people of Sinjil during the settler attack.
“I was going to recover some wounded in Sinjil, around 15 settlers blocked the way and surrounded the ambulance and began to throw stones. The windows were shattered and the sirens too. I drove through the fields and damaged the ambulance’s undercarriage doing that,” Karakra told Mondoweiss.
“When I arrived at the location where most clashes were taking place, which is a plot of farming land from where settlers advanced into the village, there were dozens of injured,” said Karakra. “The majority were injured in the head and some with fractures, so we began to transfer them to a medical center in Sinjil, but 22 were very seriously injured so we took them to the hospital in Ramallah,” he went on. “The Israeli army didn’t show up throughout the attack and came at the end and dispersed everybody. Some soldiers helped the injured.”
“Soon, we realized that Saif was missing, and we began to look for him in the surrounding area, and found him after two hours in a bush outside of the village,” recalled the ambulance driver, referring to Sayfollah by his nickname. “He was beaten and wounded but not dead, although he had been bleeding for two hours. We carried him on foot through the hills for 15 minutes, and before we reached the village, he died.”
“We also picked up Mohammad Shalabi, 23, who was already dead under an olive tree. He had received a bullet in his back that went through his chest,” Karakra said. “Mohammad worked in a cleaning company, and was preparing to get married soon, while Saif was visiting the town for the summer, before going back to his family who live in Tampa, in the U.S.,” he added.
Both young men were given a mass funeral in Mazraa Sharqiya, where Dyaa Karakra marched with his window-shattered ambulance among hundreds of mourners from all neighboring towns and villages, which have been exposed to settler violence in recent weeks.
Settler violence and annexation
Settler violence has targeted the east of Ramallah area since October 2023, mainly against Bedouin communities living in the eastern farming lands of these villages. It escalated again in April 2024, with direct attacks on the towns themselves.
The towns and villages in the area overlook the Jordan Valley, which Israel has been openly planning to annex. Most of the settler activity has targeted the farming land of the area’s towns and villages, which reach the edges of the Jordan Valley. One day after the settler attack on Kufr Malik which killed three Palestinians, Israeli settlers attacked the town of Turmusayya, just north of Kufr Malik, and set fire to farming lands.
Most recently, settlers targeted the town of Taybeh, five to ten minutes south of Sinjil and Kuf Malik. On July 6, settlers arrived at the outside part of the town’s historical 4th-century church and set fire to it. Last Sunday, delegations from diplomatic missions in Palestine and church leaders visited Taybeh to show solidarity with the people of the predominantly-Christian town and the region. A delegation from Kufr Malik, which had just lost three of its residents to settler violence were also present.
In their statement, read by the Orthodox bishop of Jerusalem, the church leaders condemned the attacks and called for “an independent investigation” into the attacks. The statement referred to the settlers as “radicals,” but acknowledged that they were enabled by the Israeli authorities. Three days later, on Thursday, Israeli settlers came back, walking their cows right at the entrance of the historical church, where diplomats and church leaders stood a few days ago. The move was viewed by locals as even further provocation by the settlers.
The targeting of the eastern Ramallah plains, and villages like Taybeh, Kufr Malik, and Sinjil, is not a coincidence. The area sits in a strategic location, bordering the Israeli ‘Allon road’, built in the 1970s, which runs from the north to the south of Palestine. In his 2019 election campaign, Benjamin Netanyahu promised to annex the Jordan Valley. The map he displayed highlighted the area to be annexed, flanked from the west by the Allon road, with the east of Ramallah towns and villages at its limits.
Since October 2023, Israeli settler violence against Bedouin communities has practically emptied all the area east of the Allon road of Palestinian life. The Al-Baidar organization for the defense of Bedouins’ rights in Palestine told Mondoweiss that, according to their documentation, some 62 Bedouin communities and 12,000 Palestinian Bedouins have been displaced. The current wave of settler violence in the area, which has been making the farming lands of the eastern towns and villages inaccessible to Palestinians would eventually limit Palestinian existence to the towns’ urban areas, effectively isolating Palestinians from the Jordan Valley, destroying rural life in the area, and make it that much easier for Israel to annex.
Meanwhile, as Palestinians mourn their most recent dead in Sinjil, they brace for the next settler attack, completely defenseless, and uncertain of their future in their own land.
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