A surge in fatal attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank has left six Palestinians dead this month, as violence intensifies under the cover of the wider Iran conflict.
ABU FALAH: When Israeli settlers attacked her village, Milia Hamayel told her son Thaer not to fight back. The 30-year-old went to defend a friend’s land anyway and was later shot dead.
“I called him two or three more times and he didn’t answer. After that — may God have mercy on him — that was it,” she told AFP, her lips trembling as she looked at his framed picture.
Two other Palestinian men from Abu Falah were also killed in the March 10 attack, according to Palestinian authorities. One was shot, while a third died from suffocation after the Israeli army fired tear gas.
While global attention focuses on the US-Israeli war with Iran, the occupied West Bank has experienced a sharp rise in deadly settler violence. Six Palestinians have been shot dead in such attacks since the start of March, based on data from the Ramallah-based health ministry.
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the increase “indicates the intensification of Israel’s ethnic cleansing efforts under cover of the war with Iran”. Local Palestinians share this grim assessment.
“It seems that when the Iran war began, the settlers saw it as a golden opportunity,” said Ibrahim Hamayel, an Abu Falah resident who tried to push back the settlers. He noted attacks have multiplied since Israel launched its campaign against Iran on February 28.
The figures support his claim. In the 28 months between the start of the Gaza war in October 2023 and the Iran conflict last month, 24 Palestinians were killed by settlers, according to the UN’s OCHA office.
Abu Falah resident Ibrahim Hamayel described the assailants as masked and armed. “They were all masked and some of them were carrying firearms,” he told AFP at the scene, pointing to blood-stained rocks where one man died.
The Israeli military said troops were sent to Abu Falah after reports of settlers attacking Palestinians and “acted to disperse those involved using crowd dispersal measures”. It condemned the settler violence and acknowledged reports of three Palestinian deaths.
Palestinians and rights groups assert the violence aims to forcibly displace communities. “Their aim is to implement their plans: displacement, confining Palestinian villages to their built-up areas only,” Ibrahim Hamayel said.
The UN reports 180 Palestinians have been displaced since the Iran war began, and 1,500 since the start of 2026. “The level of violence in the West Bank is unacceptable,” the European Union stated recently.
Settler violence had already reached record levels since the Gaza war began. Displacement in 2026 is already at 90% of the total for all of 2025, according to OCHA figures.
Muath Qassam, 32, also tried to push back the settlers in Abu Falah and was severely beaten. “They hit me with a club on the head. As soon as that happened to me, I lost consciousness,” he told AFP from his home five days later.
Abu Falah sits in an area prone to near-daily settler attacks and army violence. “Every day there are problems,” Qassam said. “Every day the settlers establish new outposts. We are not safe from them at all.”
The Sun Malaysia
