Hundreds of settlers roamed the roads and hills of al-Mughayyir, eyewitnesses said, throwing stones and shooting at residents. They set fire to homes and vehicles, including a fire truck that had been called to put out the flames that were ravaging a family business. The Palestinians threw stones at the attackers, they said, but they were easily defeated.
Members of the Israel Defense Forces in the area made little effort to stop the violence, according to eyewitnesses. A video filmed by a local journalist and obtained by B’Tselem, a major Israeli human rights group, and provided to the Washington Post, shows Israeli troops at al-Mughayyir during Friday’s attack; military vehicles travel on a smoky road under the eyes of masked attackers.
In a statement to the Post, the Israeli military said its forces were operating “with the aim of protecting the property and lives of all citizens and dispersing clashes.” … Complaints regarding soldiers’ non-compliance with orders will be investigated.”
Violence by Israeli settlers, long aimed at depopulating Palestinian areas of the occupied West Bank, intensified last year following the return to power of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – leading a coalition that included activists far-right activists who have been found guilty of anti-Arab behavior. incitement to hatred and advocated the outright annexation of the West Bank.
Since October 7, when Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people in Israel and plunged Gaza into war, there have been an average of seven settler attacks per day against Palestinians and their property – more than triple of the 2022 rate and the highest figure. since the United Nations began keeping statistics in 2006.
Last year, Netanyahu’s government approved the most housing in Israeli settlements since the Peace Now monitoring group began recording figures in 2012.
The Biden administration this year imposed sanctions on individual settlers linked to attacks on Palestinians, as well as two illegal outposts in the West Bank. “There is no justification for extremist violence against civilians,” the State Department said in a statement announcing the latest measures in March.
Yet the attacks continued.
Friday’s assault began hours after Binyamin Achimair, 14, left a farm in the Malachei HaShalom outpost to herd sheep and did not return. A broken hoe was found near its route, local media reported.
His body was discovered Saturday and buried the next day during a service in Jerusalem attended by hundreds of friends and family. “You touched so many people with your kindness and love,” his sister Rachel said in her eulogy.
The Israeli military said Binyamin was “assassinated in a terrorist attack.” In a statement, Netanyahu said Israeli forces were searching for the “killers and their collaborators.”
Noor Shehada, a 17-year-old high school student who lived on the outskirts of al-Mughayyir, recalled this feeling of terror. “A colon is missing,” she texted her father. “Come to the house.”
At the local mosque, where townspeople gathered Friday for midday prayers, a phone call from the wife of an elderly worshiper alerted the congregation that settlers had entered the town. Mujahid Abu Aliya, a paramedic with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, said he received the first report of an injured person shortly after 12:30 p.m.
Dozens of settlers took part in previous attacks on the area, residents said. This time it was hundreds. Noor felt like they were coming from all directions. She remembers looking up from her phone, where residents were posting updates on Telegram, to see a group of young men running down the hill toward her family’s farmland.
“You see something running over the hills, something coming towards us,” she said.
Photographs taken from the roof of a house on the outskirts of the village show dozens of cars lining the road that day. Settlers, their faces covered, some shirtless in the spring sun, cross the olive groves towards the house of Rasmi Abu Aliya, 55, some appearing to carry weapons.
On Monday, a Palestinian police detective moved cautiously between the damaged properties, examining each one like a crime scene. He learned that settler attacks follow a familiar pattern.
“The same organization, the same style, it’s the same thing,” said Ahmad Sejdiya of the Palestinian Authority Prosecutor’s Office. “These crimes are generally organized. It was well planned and they prepared.
At least 60 homes across the region were attacked and more than 100 vehicles were burned, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli group that monitors settler violence.
As the attack unfolded, some residents handed their children through open windows to relatives, who fled deeper into the village while the men stayed to defend their homes. Jihad Abu Aliya, a friend of Rasmi, joined him and his relatives on the roof, where settlers were pelting them with stones. The men broke the rocks into smaller pieces and threw them away, he said, but it was to no avail.
The attackers had already set fire to two cars in the courtyard, video from the roof shows. Rasmi feared they would then burn down the ground floor, where her parents, both in their 90s, were cowering.
A video filmed by relatives on the ground shows the terror reigning in the family living room. “They are trying to break the windows,” a man can be heard shouting. “See guys, here they are,” he says, zooming in through the curtains on the figures moving around outside.
Jihad was shot in the head as he stuck his head over the edge of the rooftop balcony, eyewitnesses said. He died within minutes, they said, but his body remained unattended for hours until the settlers left.
“The attacks prevented us from reaching him,” said Moslem Abu Aliya, Rasmi’s nephew. “We were almost suffocated by the smoke.”
Next door, Amer Abu Aliya walked with a limp on Monday. He said a settler shot him in the leg while he stood in his yard. Four other family members inside the house had injuries from live ammunition fired by the attackers and rubber bullets that residents said were fired by Israeli forces at Palestinians throwing stones .
“During the dispersal of the clashes, the security forces used, among other things, means to disperse the demonstrations,” the Israeli army said in its statement.
Amer’s house was badly burned. His brother’s too. Her youngest daughter, Yasmeen, stood Monday in what had been her bedroom, now charred and broken. She had repeatedly asked her father for her Legos, even though he kept telling her that they had been lost in the fire. Her uncle Zaki, 55, said she had barely slept every night since the attack.
Rescuers said the settlers and soldiers interfered with their work. Mujahid Abu Aliya, the rescuer, said one of the ambulances was initially turned away by the army as it tried to leave the village with wounded people on board.
The Israeli military said that “the ambulances were delayed for a security check and then given permission to continue.”
Major Tarek Abu Omar of the Beytun fire brigade said his men were also attacked as they rushed to the scene of a fire at a mechanical workshop. A video shared by one of the firefighters shows them fleeing their vehicle in panic. The truck was then set on fire.
The firefighters were finally evacuated to their station.
“They were in a very bad condition,” remembers Abou Omar. “I spoke to a crew member who, out of fear, ripped off his oxygen mask and threw it away while he was running.”
As the immediate trauma subsides in al-Mughayyir, the extent of the damage is becoming apparent. Several families lost the houses they had built with their savings. Sheep killed in this farming community have left the shepherds without a source of income.
Yesh Din said hundreds of farm animals had been slaughtered in several villages. In the courtyard of Anan Abu Aliya, several dozen sheep and lambs were found dead in their enclosure. The hay was sticky with blood.
Noor, the high school student, remembers running to her own family’s sheep and trying to herd them deeper into the village. The settlers threw stones at her and she threw them back. Her mother, Lamia, was briefly knocked unconscious by a rock, Noor said, then beaten to the ground.
The settlers opened fire shortly after, hitting Noor twice in the leg, she said. It was surreal, she remembers, to feel no pain at first, even as her family began screaming that she had been hurt. “I looked at my pants and saw the hole,” she said Monday after leaving the hospital.
She returned to find that the house her family had spent 10 years saving for — “we put money aside whenever we had it,” Lamia said, her face badly bruised now — was burned down. They hadn’t even finished paying for the furniture, said his father, Shehada.
Objects that had not been burned or blackened were slashed with knives.
Noor said her schoolbooks were the only thing she hoped to save. His final exams are in two weeks. Some were damaged by fire, but she thought she could still use them.
As she left, she used her finger to write a message in the soot on the kitchen wall: “Our souls are valuable, but our country is more valuable,” it read.
Meg Kelly in Washington, Hazem Balousha in Amman, Jordan, and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
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