Israeli soldiers and settlers have unleashed a campaign of terror on Palestinians across the occupied West Bank with home raids, shootings, assaults, mass detentions, and house demolitions.
ZENA TAHHAN A guest post. She is an independent TV reporter and writer based in occupied Jerusalem.
JUL 27. GUEST POST. The Guardian
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank—In the aftermath of Friday’s killings in the village of Tal, hundreds of armed Israeli settlers and soldiers launched a campaign of terror targeting Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank, with reports of home raids, shootings, assaults, mass detentions, and demolitions of property—including residential buildings, mosques, cars, agricultural equipment, and farmland.
It began when armed settlers raided Tal, which is southwest of Nablus city in the northern West Bank, at around 7 a.m. local time and opened fire. They were confronted by Palestinian residents of the village who were attempting to protect their homes and land. Just a week earlier, armed settlers had raided Tal and set fire to a Palestinian home. The family managed to escape before the house was consumed by flames.
During Friday’s attack, one of the Palestinian residents, Farouq Ramadan, a father of five, managed to seize the machine gun of an Israeli settler in a moment captured on camera. Ramadan then shot one of the settlers. Ramadan, and three of his cousins— brothers Jawad and Ibrahim Ramadan, and their cousin Imran—were then shot dead by settlers and soldiers, while two settlers were killed.
“This was self-defense. Farouq was defending himself, his uncle and his cousins. Farouq is well-known in our village—he has never gone out to confront the occupation and its forces and settlers. Had the settlers not been close to his sister’s home in the village he would not have gone out,” Firas al-Saifi, a local Palestinian journalist from Tal, told Drop Site. “The situation is that they raid Palestinian villages and homes and point their guns at residents, and expect them to be killed in silence.”
Four others were shot and wounded at the scene by settler and soldier fire, including Orwa Ramadan, the brother of Jawad and Ibrahim, who was shot in the shoulder. Shortly after the attack, Israeli soldiers abducted Orwa from his hospital bed at the Nablus Specialty Hospital, where he was transferred for treatment. He remains detained along with another one of his brothers, Majd Ramadan, who was at work and uninvolved during the attack.
The arrests came amid a sweeping campaign of mass detentions across the West Bank by Israeli occupation forces, with more than 100 Palestinians taken into custody and interrogated, according to local officials. More than 20 remain in custody as of Monday.
Israeli forces also raided Ramadan’s home, taking measurements in preparation for the planned demolition of his family home and that of his parents, who live on the lower floor of the same building. Armed settlers, accompanied by the Israeli military, established a new illegal outpost—installing caravans after uprooting hundreds of Palestinian-owned olive trees in the area.
It is one of at least six new colonial outposts reported on occupied Palestinian land as Israeli settlers take advantage of the mass crackdown they incited, in addition to the expansion of existing outposts over the past few days alone with the support of the Israeli army. Other outposts established by Israeli settlers over the weekend in Palestinian villages include in Umm Safa and Sinjil in the Ramallah governorate; in Deir Ballut in the Salfit governorate; Asira al-Shamaliya in the Nablus governorate and another existing one in Nablus, Madama, that is being expanded.
MORE: Video obtained by Drop Site of the new settler outpost at Tal
Expanding Attacks and Colonization
Once the news of the two killed Israelis emerged on Friday, hundreds more settlers attacked at least 30 different villages and locations between Friday and midday on Monday. The Israeli army not only supported the settlers but launched its own military raids.
Dozens of Palestinians were wounded, including many through live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, rocks, pepper-spray, and physical assaults. At least seven homes, two mosques, a quarry, many cars, and farmlands were set on fire and burned, while many other properties faced arson attempts but were blocked by residents.
Reports of attacks came from numerous villages, including Tal, Surra, Qusra, Urif, Madama, Asira al-Qibliya, Burin, Iraq Burin, Qabalan, Jalud, Qaryut, Aqraba, Beita, Lubban al-Sharqiya, Wadi al-Sha’ir, Khirbat Tana al-Fawqa, Beit Furik, As-Sawiya, Tilfeet, and Huwwara in the Nablus district; Jit, Fara’ta, and Immatin in the Qalqilya district; Kur in the Tulkarem district; Sinjil, Beitillu, and Ein Samiya in the Ramallah and al-Bireh district; Surif in the Hebron district; and al-Maniya in the Bethlehem district.
Compounding the attacks, the Israeli army imposed a suffocating lockdown on Palestinian cities and severed movement between towns and villages, effectively trapping residents as the attacks were underway. Because of blocked access to essential services, according to local medics, there have been at least four cases of Palestinian women being forced to give birth at military closures and checkpoints over the weekend, with ambulances blocked from evacuating them. On Monday, one woman tragically delivered a stillborn after enduring severe bleeding due to the closures by the Israeli army. Soldiers held the ambulance for more than 30 minutes at Nablus, searched the woman despite her condition, and ordered the crew to switch off the vehicle’s engine, shutting down its medical equipment. The woman survived after reaching hospital, but lost her baby.
Bashar Qaryouti, a volunteer medic and activist from the village of Qaryout south of Nablus city, explained that the current period marks a clear shift. “We used to be afraid of the night—we called the settlers ‘bats’ because they used to carry out their attacks under the cover of darkness. Now, they commit all their crimes in broad daylight without a care in the world,” Qaryouti told Drop Site.
Following the killings, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also in charge of the building of illegal colonies in the occupied West Bank,called for the destruction of Palestinian villages and the transfer of their residents, and demanded the expansion of Israeli colonies. A similar statement was made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, who announced a series of measures, among them the building of new colonies.
While most settler attacks in recent years have focused on Palestinians living in Area C—the area comprising roughly 60 percent of the occupied West Bank and excluding the built-up areas of Palestinian cities and villages—settler violence is now increasingly moving into Areas A and B, where the majority of Palestinian villages are located.
“We are in a new stage. The settlers and soldiers have emptied about 99 percent of Area C through their attacks and by forcing residents out, and now the settlers are moving into the villages and attacking them. They have begun taking over homes on the edges of villages and launching attacks deep inside our towns,” Qaryouti said.
One of the new outposts is in Deir Istya, a historic Palestinian town in the Salfit governorate in the northern West Bank. “The place where they established [one of the new outposts] is the only remaining open space available for the people of Deir Istya to expand their construction in the future. The area they have taken control of covers 44 dunams (around 10 acres),” Izzat Mansour, the mayor of Deir Istya, told Drop Site on Monday. “They set up tents there last night, and since three o’clock this morning Israeli army forces have been present there. All the surrounding areas of Deir Istya are already enclosed by settlers.”
“We see that what happened to our people in 1948 is now being repeated in the West Bank,” Mansour added, referring to the mass expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes by Zionist militias in what is known as the Nakba, Arabic for ‘catastrophe.’ “There is continuous and systematic daily harassment from different directions by settlers. We are using every means available to us to continue living on these lands, to resist displacement, and to prevent them from gaining control over these areas and imposing a new reality.”
Routine attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers on Palestinians in the West Bank have been taking place for decades, but over the last few years, particularly since the genocide in Gaza began in 2023, they have significantly increased and become more organized. The Israeli military also increasingly shows up to support the settlers’ actions.
Sinjil, a Palestinian village northeast of Ramallah, was close to one of the new outposts established this weekend. “Before the events of Tal—two or three days before—Sinjil was attacked by dozens of armed settlers. They fired live ammunition directly at people…The settlers have gone far beyond all limits. Their attacks have escalated to the point where they enter people’s homes, vandalize shops, vandalize houses. These are systematic attacks. They steal money—anything they can get their hands on,” Mohammad Ghafry, a resident of Sinjil. “Since the events in Tal, they have tightened the closure of Sinjil. All of the town’s entrances have been completely sealed off.”
“In addition to that, they established a new settlement outpost in the eastern plain,” Ghafry added. “These lands belong to al-Mazra’a al-Sharqiya, not Sinjil, but the outpost is located at Sinjil’s eastern entrance. The settlers in this outpost have effectively become like the army’s eyes.”
Before the attacks on Tal, more than 80 Palestinians had already been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank so far in 2026, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry
The coordination between armed settlers and Israeli occupation forces is painfully clear, Qaryouti said. “They have worked together for a long time, but now they do it openly.”
“Both the occupation authorities and the settlers are deliberately pushing Palestinians towards an explosion because it serves their broader settlement plan.”
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