Zürcher Nachrichten - Deadly Israeli settler violence surges in West Bank during Iran war

"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 a framed picture of her son, Thaer.

A little while later Thaer was dead, shot and killed alongside another man from the village, Palestinian authorities said. A third Palestinian man died from suffocation after the Israeli army fired tear gas, they said.

While the world's attention is focused on the US-Israeli war with Iran, the Israeli-occupied West Bank has experienced a surge in deadly settler violence.

Since the start of the month, six Palestinians have been shot dead in settler attacks, according to a tally of data from the Ramallah-based health ministry.

Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said the increase in bloodshed "indicates the intensification of Israel's ethnic cleansing efforts under cover of the war with Iran".

That sentiment was shared by Palestinians on the ground.

"It seems that when the Iran war began, the settlers saw it as a golden opportunity," Ibrahim Hamayel, a resident of Abu Falah who tried to push back the settlers, told AFP.

Hamayel, who is not related to the man who died, said that the attacks had multiplied since Israel launched its campaign against the Islamic republic on February 28.

The figures appeared to back him up.

In the 28 months between the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023 and the start of the war with Iran last month, 24 Palestinians were killed by settlers, according to OCHA.

In addition to roughly three million Palestinians, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.

- 'They were all masked' -

Abu Falah resident Ibrahim Hamayel told AFP at the scene where the clash unfolded that when the settlers came "they were all masked and some of them were carrying firearms."

He pointed to the spot where one of the men had died that day in an olive tree grove. Blood stained the white limestone rocks, blending in with the West Bank's distinctive reddish soil.

Little stone circles had been laid as impromptu memorials to the men at the site where they died, a little Palestinian flag flapping above one.

The Israeli military told AFP that troops were sent to Abu Falah, northeast of the Palestinian city of Ramallah, after receiving reports of Palestinians being attacked by Israeli settlers, and "acted to disperse those involved using crowd dispersal measures".

It condemned the violence from Israeli settlers and acknowledged reports of three Palestinian deaths, including one from suffocation but did not specify whether he died from the tear gas used by the military.

Palestinians and Israeli rights groups say that the goal of harassment is to drive Palestinians from the land, one rocky hill at a time.

"Their aim is to implement their plans: displacement, confining Palestinian villages to their built-up areas only", Ibrahim Hamayel told AFP.

The UN says 180 Palestinians have been displaced since the war with Iran started on February 28, and 1,500 since the start of 2026.

"The level of violence in the West Bank is unacceptable," the European Union said in a recent statement, adding that many Palestinian communities "have been attacked, (their) properties damaged and livelihoods destroyed" since the Iran war began.

This comes after settler violence consistently breached record levels since the start of the war in Gaza, with displacement this year already at 90 percent of 2025 levels, per OCHA figures.

- 'Every day' -

Muath Qassam, 32, also went to push back the settlers in Abu Falah, but he was initially unaware of the three deaths that shook his village.

"They hit me with a club on the head. As soon as that happened to me, I lost consciousness and woke up in the hospital", he told AFP from his home five days later, a large bandage on his forehead and yellowing bruises under his eyes.

Abu Falah sits in an area particularly prone to settler attacks and army violence, with near-daily incidents in neighbouring villages.

"Every day there are problems", Qassam said.

"Every day the settlers establish new outposts. We are not safe from them at all."

A.P.Huber--NZN