On a Tuesday in the occupied West Bank, a deadly attack carried out by Israeli settlers at a local school left two Palestinians dead and at least four others wounded, according to regional medical and official sources. The Palestinian Ministry of Health released the identities of the fatal victims: 14-year-old student Aws Hamdi al-Nassan and 32-year-old Jihad Marzouq Abu Naiem. The assault unfolded at a school in al-Mughayyir, a village located northeast of the Palestinian administrative center of Ramallah.
Local human rights group Al-Baidar documented escalating tensions in the area just moments before the shooting. The organization confirmed that groups of settlers, wearing uniforms nearly identical to standard Israeli military attire, had launched an earlier attempt to forcibly expel local Palestinian farmers from their agricultural land south of al-Mughayyir. When the settlers entered the cultivated plots to block farmers from accessing and working their property, tensions rose rapidly, setting the stage for the subsequent violent attack. A post from Quds News Network on social platform X (formerly Twitter) further clarified that five students were hit by live fire during the incident, with one suffering a life-threatening gunshot wound to the head.
The deadly school attack is not an isolated incident: it comes amid a dramatic, well-documented spike in daily settler violence targeting Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank. On the same day as the al-Mughayyir shooting, separate incidents of Israeli settler disruption and infrastructure destruction were recorded across the region. In the northern Jordan Valley’s Khirbet Samra area, Israeli settlers backed by Israeli military forces intercepted and detained a passing commercial truck, blocking it from continuing its route and disrupting local transportation routes. Hours later, Israeli forces carried out the demolition of al-Maleh primary school, another blow to Palestinian civilian infrastructure in the area.
While settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is a longstanding issue, data confirms that the frequency and severity of these attacks have increased sharply since October 2023. In addition to growing use of live ammunition by settlers, the region has seen a systematic campaign of forced displacement targeting Palestinian nomadic communities. Official figures from the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission underscore the scale of the escalation: the group recorded 497 separate attacks against Palestinians and their property across the occupied West Bank in March alone, a surge that left nine Palestinians dead in that single month.
This report was originally published by Middle East Eye, an outlet that provides independent, in-depth coverage of developments across the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions.