Six people were killed as a Palestinian man disarmed and shot Israeli settlers raiding his village in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Palestinians take to the streets to resist as Israeli settlers under the protection of Israel Defense Forces troops raid the town of Sarra in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine on July 24, 2026.
(Photo by Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Jul 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday announced actions to tighten and accelerate the illegal occupation and colonization of the West Bank after a Palestinian defending his village from rampaging settlers fatally shot two Israelis—whose companions killed four Palestinians in response—while other members of Netanyahu’s government called for more ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
Residents of Tell—located 3 miles southwest of Nablus and less than 2 miles from the illegal Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad—said settlers attacked homes on the outskirts of the town at around 8:30 on Friday morning.
According to The Times of Israel, a group of several dozen settlers invaded the village under the pretense of going on a hike. However, as the newspaper noted, Tell is located in an area of the occupied West Bank that is off limits to Israelis unless they obtain permission from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which the military said they did not do.
Local Palestinian leader Essam Saifi told Reuters that settlers attacked the eastern part of Tell and tried to break into homes there. When residents emerged to confront the settlers, the intruders opened fire on them before leaving.
Backed by IDF troops, the settlers returned around half an hour later. Video recorded by one of the settlers shows an Israeli firing his gun in the air while his companions, who included minors, shout threats while other settlers stormed local residents’ land. A Palestinian man snatched a long gun from a member of the Havat Gilad local security squad and shot him and an IDF major, mortally wounding both men.
Israelis returned fire, killing four Palestinians, including the shooter, and wounding four others. IDF commandos later raided a hospital in Nablus and seized two of the wounded Palestinians.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “this massacre represents a renewed image of the ongoing Nakba to which our Palestinian people are subjected,” a reference to the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Zionist forces during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
The ministry also condemned “the misleading narratives promoted by the Israeli occupation authorities... in a systematic attempt to turn the executioner into the victim, and to cover up the crimes of murder, field executions, massacres, and grave violations committed by the occupation forces and settler militias against the Palestinian people.”
IDF troops subsequently locked down Tell and Nablus while deploying five additional companies to the area and canceling soldiers’ weekend furloughs in preparation for imminent “extensive counterterrorism operational activity in the sector.”
Responding to the incident as well as two separate stabbings of Israelis in the West Bank on Thursday, Netanyahu convened a security consultation, which resulted in a joint statement with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announcing a tightening of the occupation and acceleration of the colonization of Palestine—both already illegal under international law.
The statement said Israel will demolish the family home of the Palestinian who shot the two Israelis, confiscate arms and revoke work permits of Palestinians in “villages acting as terrorist hubs,” reinforce IDF units throughout the occupied territories, expedite the “legalization of farm outposts” and establish new ones, and increase apartheid checkpoints and road separations.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich responded to the incident by calling for the destruction and “evacuation”—a term widely viewed as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing—of local Palestinians “for their own protection.”
“This is our appropriate Zionist answer to terrorists and terrorism,” Smotrich said.
“We will not normalize the erosion of deterrence and the brazenness of our enemies in recent weeks against the pioneers of settlement and the farms,” Smotrich, who chairs the far-right Religious Zionism party, said on social media, “I demand that the IDF act with an iron fist against the village of the murderers and its surroundings and restore governance and deterrence.”
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads the far-right Jewish Power party, demanded the Palestinian shooter’s town be obliterated like Beit Hanoun in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been waging a war that United Nations officials, legal and academic experts, and around 20 national governments have called a genocide.
“For every Jew murdered, the enemy must suffer the loss of land and homes,” Ben-Gvir said. “This is the language spoken in the Middle East, and just as we spoke it in Gaza, it is time to speak it in [the West Bank] as well.”
Yair Golan, who heads the opposition Democrats, accused Netanyahu and Katz of “a clear intent to set the area ablaze.”
“Every escalation in the field endangers human lives—Israelis and Palestinians alike,” he added.
David Zini, the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security and counterintelligence agency, urged the Israeli public “not to take the law into their own hands and to place their trust in the IDF and the Shin Bet, whose mission and duty this is.”
Many settlers rejected Zini’s call and instead carried out revenge attacks on West Bank towns and villages, reportedly including Madama, Urif, Burin, Far’ata, Jit, Qabalan, Sarra, and others, resulting in multiple injuries.
Meanwhile, settlers mourned the killing of the two slain Israelis, 32-year-old Havat Gilad civil defense squad member Benayahu Mellet and 27-year-old IDF Maj. Yuval Ezra.
Extremist settler Meir Ettinger eulogized Mellet on social media, saying that “he was never satisfied with recognized roads and fences, and strived continuously to conquer the region.”
“Benayahu always insisted on not making a distinction between areas C and B,” Ettinger added.
Under the moribund Oslo Accords, the West Bank is divided into Areas A, B, and C. Area A is under full Palestinian Authority control, while Area B is under mixed control and Area C is under full Israeli control.
Israeli efforts to expand West Bank settlement activity have accelerated dramatically since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Attacks on West Bank Palestinians, including pogroms carried out by mobs of settlers protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have killed at least 1,111 Palestinians—at least 243 of them children—since October 2023, according to the latest report published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israeli officials say 47 Israelis—including IDF troops, security personnel, and civilians—have been killed by Palestinian attacks over the same period.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, more than 620,000 Jews currently reside in over 130 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While Israel grants every Jew in the world the right to settle there, it has—against UN resolutions and international law—refused to allow the approximately 5 million Palestinian refugees alive today to return to their homeland.
B’Tselem is one of 20 Israeli human rights groups that on Friday issued an “urgent call to the international community to take immediate action to stop Israel’s violence and prevent pogroms by settler militias and the Israeli army across the West Bank.”
Settler Violence Escalates in West Bank
The past week saw the killing of three Palestinians, including a teenage footballer, at the hands of illegal Israeli settlers and the IOF. Understand why it is concentrated east of Ramallah.
Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence. Photo: AP
For decades, Israel has employed settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as part of its program of ethnic cleansing. However, such violence has sharply increased since the far-right ultra-nationalist government, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power in 2022.
While settler violence has affected the entire occupied territory over the last couple of years, it has been heavily concentrated in villages east of Ramallah, including Al-Mughayyir, Turmus Ayya, Deir Dibwan, Deir Jarir, Kufr Malik, Mazraa Al-Sharqiyah, and Khirbet Abu Falah.
A convergence of geographic, political, and strategic factors has made this area one of the primary flashpoints for displacement and the takeover of land in the occupied West Bank.
Ramallah’s eastern countryside overlooks the Jordan Valley to the east and the central West Bank to the west, making it a critical visual and geographical crest.
A continuous chain of Israeli settlements and wildcat outposts were established on the hilltops around these villages in order to isolate Palestinian agricultural communities, cutting them off from their surrounding pasturelands, and connecting infrastructure.
The local economy of villages east of Ramallah remains deeply rooted in traditional rain-fed agriculture, notably olive orchards and livestock grazing. This in turn made the area a target for systematic settler violence during harvest periods, severely undermining the long-term economic viability of the land for indigenous farmers.
The semi-nomadic Bedouin and Palestinian herding communities along the eastern Ramallah slopes have also been systematically targeted by aggressive settler groups, who destroy their crops, seize their animals, block their water supply and attack them physically.
Three Palestinians killed in villages east of Ramallah in one week
On Sunday, July 19, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and illegal settlers launched a coordinated attack against Palestinians in Deir Jarir town, northeast of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.
Odah Abdul-Rahim Farakhna (53), and Ahmad Adul-Rashid Abu Mokho (26) were shot dead, while a third person was injured in the assault.
B’Tselem, an Israeli non-profit organization that documents human rights violations committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, slammed the offensive on Deir Jarir, accusing Israel of promoting ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
“The killing in Deir Jarir is one example of how Israel promotes ethnic cleansing in the West Bank: settlers invade and steal, while the military and police accompany them and shoot Palestinians who try to protect their homes and property,” Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem noted.
The deadly attack on Deir Jarir was preceded by another tragic incident in Al-Mughayer village, northeast of Ramallah.
Palestinian footballer Fadi Hamdallah Al-Nasaan (17) died on Saturday, July 18, due to injuries he sustained after being shot by the IOF one week earlier during a raid on Al-Mughayer.
According to the Palestinian Football Association, Al-Nasaan is one of 1,013 Palestinian athletes, including 568 from the football community, who have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023.
Meanwhile, the latest death toll published by Shireen Observatory indicates that at least 79 Palestinians have been killed due to Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year. This includes 21 children, five women, two elderly people, three prisoners, and one journalist.
Courtesy: Breakthrough News
Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence. Photo: AP
For decades, Israel has employed settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as part of its program of ethnic cleansing. However, such violence has sharply increased since the far-right ultra-nationalist government, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power in 2022.
While settler violence has affected the entire occupied territory over the last couple of years, it has been heavily concentrated in villages east of Ramallah, including Al-Mughayyir, Turmus Ayya, Deir Dibwan, Deir Jarir, Kufr Malik, Mazraa Al-Sharqiyah, and Khirbet Abu Falah.
A convergence of geographic, political, and strategic factors has made this area one of the primary flashpoints for displacement and the takeover of land in the occupied West Bank.
Ramallah’s eastern countryside overlooks the Jordan Valley to the east and the central West Bank to the west, making it a critical visual and geographical crest.
A continuous chain of Israeli settlements and wildcat outposts were established on the hilltops around these villages in order to isolate Palestinian agricultural communities, cutting them off from their surrounding pasturelands, and connecting infrastructure.
The local economy of villages east of Ramallah remains deeply rooted in traditional rain-fed agriculture, notably olive orchards and livestock grazing. This in turn made the area a target for systematic settler violence during harvest periods, severely undermining the long-term economic viability of the land for indigenous farmers.
The semi-nomadic Bedouin and Palestinian herding communities along the eastern Ramallah slopes have also been systematically targeted by aggressive settler groups, who destroy their crops, seize their animals, block their water supply and attack them physically.
Three Palestinians killed in villages east of Ramallah in one week
On Sunday, July 19, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and illegal settlers launched a coordinated attack against Palestinians in Deir Jarir town, northeast of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.
Odah Abdul-Rahim Farakhna (53), and Ahmad Adul-Rashid Abu Mokho (26) were shot dead, while a third person was injured in the assault.
B’Tselem, an Israeli non-profit organization that documents human rights violations committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, slammed the offensive on Deir Jarir, accusing Israel of promoting ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
“The killing in Deir Jarir is one example of how Israel promotes ethnic cleansing in the West Bank: settlers invade and steal, while the military and police accompany them and shoot Palestinians who try to protect their homes and property,” Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem noted.
The deadly attack on Deir Jarir was preceded by another tragic incident in Al-Mughayer village, northeast of Ramallah.
Palestinian footballer Fadi Hamdallah Al-Nasaan (17) died on Saturday, July 18, due to injuries he sustained after being shot by the IOF one week earlier during a raid on Al-Mughayer.
According to the Palestinian Football Association, Al-Nasaan is one of 1,013 Palestinian athletes, including 568 from the football community, who have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023.
Meanwhile, the latest death toll published by Shireen Observatory indicates that at least 79 Palestinians have been killed due to Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year. This includes 21 children, five women, two elderly people, three prisoners, and one journalist.
Courtesy: Breakthrough News
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