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settler violence
Israeli Forces Kill Parents and 2 Children in West Bank, Beat Surviving Children
"Targeting an entire family in this savage manner reveals the true nature of the Israeli occupation and its policies based on killing and extermination, destruction and displacement," the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Mar 15, 2026
The Israeli Defense Forces killed a Palestinian couple and two of their children in the West Bank on Sunday, on one of the deadliest days for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in weeks.
The soldiers opened fire on a car in the village of Tammun in which 37-year-old Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, his 35-year-old wife Waad, and their four sons Mohammad, Othman, Mustafa, and Khaled were traveling. Odeh, Waad, 5-year-old Mohammad, and 7-year-old Othman were shot in the head and died, leaving behind two injured children.
"We came under direct fire, we didn't know the source. Everyone in the car was martyred, except my brother Mustafa and me," one of the surviving children, 12-year-old Khaled, told Reuters from the hospital.
He said that after the shooting was over, the Israeli soldiers pulled him out of the car and began to beat him, telling him, "We killed dogs."
"These crimes occur within a systematic policy pursued by the occupation authorities using lethal force against Palestinian civilians."
The soldiers also beat his other surviving brother, according to Al Jazeera.
The Israeli military said that it had been operating in Tammun to make arrests on "terrorist" charges and that soldiers had fired on a vehicle when it accelerated toward them, according to Reuters. It said it was reviewing the incident.
Al Jazeera journalist Nida Ibrahim said that the family had been totally shocked by the shooting.
“The extended family says the father and the mother did not know that Israeli forces were there as they were in a Palestinian car,” she said.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the killing on social media as a "terrifying arbitrary execution crime that targeted an entire Palestinian family inside their vehicle."
The Israeli soldiers also prevented Red Crescent workers from reaching the family, the ministry said, leading to the families' "deliberate and cold-blooded execution."
The ministry continued: "The Ministry affirms that targeting an entire family in this savage manner reveals the true nature of the Israeli occupation and its policies based on killing and extermination, destruction and displacement, amid a systematic impunity, and it further affirms that these crimes, concurrent with the escalation of settler crimes and their organized terrorism in the occupied West Bank, are not isolated incidents, but part of a comprehensive and systematic aggression aimed at exterminating the Palestinian people and displacing them, in clear exploitation of the escalation occurring in the region."
In a statement issued on social media, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) also blamed the deaths on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which has been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice.
"This escalation in these crimes comes as a direct result of the expansion of shooting instructions in the Israeli army, the rising violence of settlers amid the prevalence of an impunity policy, and the entrenchment of ethnic cleansing amid unprecedented international silence," PCHR said.
It continued: "While the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights condemns the unjustified murder crimes committed by occupation forces and settlers, it affirms that these crimes occur within a systematic policy pursued by the occupation authorities using lethal force against Palestinian civilians, in flagrant violation of the principles of necessity and distinction that form fundamental pillars of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Moreover, they come as part of a pattern aimed at terrorizing citizens, intimidating them, and entrenching ethnic cleansing policies, and replicating acts of genocide, albeit in a less overt manner."
Also on Sunday, Israeli settlers killed a Palestinian man in Nablus Governorate, making him the sixth man killed by settlers since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. Movement restrictions imposed due the war have emboldened setters to attack, knowing that ambulances will be delayed in reaching their victims, human rights advocates and healthcare workers told Reuters.
In total, Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed 25 Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, PCHR said.
In Gaza, where Israeli strikes at first declined following the beginning of the Iran war, the death toll is rising again. On Sunday, Israeli strikes killed nine police officers in Zawayda and a pregnant woman, her husband, and son in Nuseirat.
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'A State-Sponsored Lynching, Funded by the US': Israeli Settlers Kill Palestinian-American in West Bank
Local officials called the killing a “fully-fledged crime... carried out under the protection and supervision of the Israeli occupation forces.”
Feb 20, 2026
Palestinian authorities and witnesses to an Israeli settler attack in the West Bank that killed a 19-year-old Palestinian-American this week said the young man, Nasrallah Abu Siyam, had been trying to stop settlers from attacking a farmer in the village of Mukhmas when he was fatally shot.
Abu Siyam was an American citizen, his mother told the Associated Press, and was in his village Wednesday afternoon when a group of settlers arrived there and attempted to steal sheep from a local farmer.
After residents intervened, the Israel Defense Forces arrived and shot tear gas, sound grenades, and live ammunition, according to Mukhmas resident Raed Abu Ali. The IDF told the AP that it had only used "riot dispersal methods" to stop Palestinians in the town from throwing rocks.
But Abu Ali reported that the settlers who had initiated the assault "were encouraged" when the IDF got involved, and they "started shooting live bullets" as well as hitting injured people with sticks.
Several other Palestinians sustained gunshot wounds. The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed Abu Siyam's killing.
The governorate of Jerusalem called the killing a “fully-fledged crime... carried out under the protection and supervision of the Israeli occupation forces.”
Abu Siyam was the second Palestinian-American to be killed by Israeli settlers in less than a year and at least the 11th to be killed since 2022.
Israeli settlers and military forces killed 240 Palestinians in the West Bank last year as violence there surged and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government pushed to further illegally annex the occupied territory, with Israelis building 130 new settlements in the West Bank in 2024 and 2025.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, progressive lawmakers in the US have called on President Donald Trump to take action to stop Israel from its illegal annexation, but the president has reportedly approved of plans like one that proposes the creation of the E1 settlement, which "buries the idea of a Palestinian state," according to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Abu Siyam was killed days after Israel approved a plan to designate large parts of the West Bank as "state property" of Israel, forcing Palestinians to prove that they own their land.
Breaking the Silence, a group formed by former Israeli soldiers to oppose Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, emphasized that while the IDF did not carry out the attack that killed Abu Siyam, the military has played an active role in settlers' assaults on Palestinian communities in the West Bank, including in Mukhmas.
"Since October, the village has faced escalating settler terror: olive trees uprooted, Palestinians and activists attacked and hospitalized, homes torched," said the group. "When residents tried to rebuild their burned homes after the pogrom that took place three weeks ago, the army blocked them, declaring the area a 'closed military zone.' Somehow, measures are taken only after the pogrom. Never to prevent it. This is not a mistake, it's strategy."
"The IDF is not 'failing its mission,'" Breaking the Silence added. "It is implementing a policy: Settlers initiate the violence, the army enforces the outcome, until communities are pushed out. If we don’t stop it, Muḥkmas’ story will be no different."
A US official told Reuters that “the US Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas," and a spokesperson for the US embassy in Israel told the AP that US officials "condemn this violence."
The anti-war group CodePink, however, emphasized that deadly settler attacks, including those that have killed US citizens, are "funded by the United States," the largest international financial backer of the IDF.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since 2023 and have forcibly displaced more than 10,000.
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A War Without Headlines: Israel’s Shock-and-Awe Campaign in the West Bank
The most violent period of Israeli aggression in the West Bank since the Second Intifada has been largely overlooked, in part because of the sheer scale and horror of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but it's consequences could prove just as devastating.
Jan 16, 2026
Shock and awe. The phrase is apt in describing what Israel has done in the occupied West Bank almost immediately following the events of October 7, 2023, and the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein defines “shock and awe” not merely as a military tactic, but as a political and economic strategy that exploits moments of collective trauma—whether caused by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse—to impose radical policies that would otherwise be resisted. According to Klein, societies in a state of shock are rendered disoriented and vulnerable, allowing those in power to push through sweeping transformations while opposition is fragmented or overwhelmed.
Though the policy is often discussed in the context of US foreign policy—from Iraq to Haiti—Israel has employed shock-and-awe tactics with greater frequency, consistency, and refinement. Unlike the US, which has applied the doctrine episodically across distant theaters, Israel has used it continuously against a captive population living under its direct military control.
Indeed, the Israeli version of shock and awe has long been a default policy for suppressing Palestinians. It has been applied across decades in the occupied Palestinian territory and extended to neighboring Arab countries whenever it suited Israeli strategic objectives.
What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground.
In Lebanon, this approach became known as the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut that was systematically destroyed by Israel during its 2006 war on Lebanon. The doctrine advocates the use of disproportionate force against civilian areas, the deliberate targeting of infrastructure, and the transformation of entire neighborhoods into rubble in order to deter resistance through collective punishment.
Gaza has been the epicenter of Israel’s application of this tactic. In the years preceding the genocide, Israeli officials increasingly framed their assaults on Gaza as limited, “managed” wars designed to periodically weaken Palestinian resistance.
These operations were rationalized through the concept of “mowing the lawn,” a phrase used by Israeli military strategists to describe the periodic use of overwhelming violence to “reestablish deterrence.” The logic was that Gaza could not be politically resolved, only indefinitely managed through recurrent destruction.
What unfolded in the West Bank shortly after the start of the Gaza genocide followed a strikingly similar pattern.
Beginning in October 2023, Israel launched an unprecedented campaign of violence across the West Bank. This included large-scale military raids in cities and refugee camps, the routine use of airstrikes—previously rare in the West Bank—the widespread deployment of armored vehicles, and a surge in settler violence carried out with the backing or direct participation of the Israeli army.
The death toll rose sharply, with hundreds of Palestinians killed in a matter of months, including children. Entire refugee camps, such as Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarm, were subjected to systematic destruction: Roads were torn up, homes demolished, water and electricity networks destroyed, and medical access severely restricted. Israeli forces repeatedly laid siege to communities, preventing the movement of ambulances, journalists, and humanitarian workers.
At the same time, Israel accelerated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities, particularly in Area C. Dozens of Bedouin and rural villages were forcibly emptied through a combination of military orders, settler attacks, home demolitions, and the denial of access to land and water. Families were driven out through sustained terror designed to make daily life impossible.
Yet the most violent period of Israeli aggression in the West Bank since the Second Intifada (2000-2005) has been largely overlooked, in part because of the sheer scale and horror of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The annihilation of Gaza has rendered the violence in the West Bank seemingly secondary in the global imagination, despite the fact that its long-term consequences may prove just as devastating.
At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition succeeded in presenting themselves to the world as reckless, unrestrained, and ideologically driven—willing and able to expand the cycle of destruction far beyond Gaza, into the West Bank and across Israel’s borders into neighboring Arab countries. This performance of extremism functioned as a political strategy.
The consequences are now unmistakable. Large areas of the West Bank lie in ruins. Entire communities have been shattered, their social and physical fabric deliberately dismantled. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, more than 12,000 Palestinian children remain displaced, increasingly suggesting a displacement that may become permanent rather than temporary.
History, however, offers a critical lesson. The Palestinian struggle against Israeli settler colonialism has repeatedly demonstrated that Palestinians do not remain passive indefinitely. Despite the paralysis and fragmentation of their political leadership, Palestinian society has consistently regenerated its capacity for resistance.
Israel understands this reality as well. It knows that shock is not infinite, that fear eventually gives way to defiance, and that once the immediate trauma begins to fade, Palestinians will reorganize and push back against imposed conditions of domination.
What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground—one that enables formal annexation, normalizes permanent military rule, and completes the ethnic cleansing of large segments of the Palestinian population.
For this reason, a deeper and more sustained understanding of current events in the West Bank is essential. Without confronting this reality directly, Israeli plans will proceed largely unchallenged. To expose, resist, and ultimately defeat these designs is not only a matter of political analysis but a moral imperative inseparable from supporting the Palestinian people in restoring their dignity and achieving their long-denied freedom.
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