A wave of violent tensions has swept the occupied West Bank in 2026, following a fatal clash in the Palestinian village of Tell that left one Israeli settler and four members of a local Palestinian family dead. In the aftermath, senior Israeli political leaders and prominent settler organizations have issued explicit calls for violent revenge, including demands to raze entire Palestinian communities and displace their civilian populations.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister and leader of the Religious Zionism party, announced Friday that the villages of Tell, Iraq Burin and Beit Furik should be destroyed, saying the communities should be left in the same state of ruin as large areas of Nablus and Tulkarm that were heavily damaged in recent Israeli military operations. Smotrich added that all civilian residents of the targeted villages should be forcibly evacuated, and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reassign control of the entire area from the Palestinian Authority to Israeli administration.
Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, echoed the hardline stance, arguing that for every Israeli killed, Palestinian communities must forfeit land and residential property. He went further, demanding that Israel implement the same strategy of leveling entire residential areas that it has employed in the Gaza Strip across occupied West Bank Palestinian communities.
The inflammatory rhetoric comes shortly after armed Israeli settlers, escorted by uniformed Israeli military personnel, carried out a large raid on Tell, where settler violence has surged in recent months. The clash that sparked the current unrest left four members of the Palestinian Saifi family dead by Israeli gunfire; Israeli military officials claim one member of the family seized a settler’s weapon and killed the settler before dying in the subsequent gunfight.
Data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health underscores the escalating violence in the territory this year: as of this latest unrest, at least 87 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the West Bank in 2026, 21 of whom were killed by direct settler attacks.
Zvi Sukkot, another lawmaker from Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, amplified the calls for destruction Friday, telling Israeli Channel 14 that Tell must be left in ruins, and posting a blank black image captioned only “Revenge” to his public Facebook page. The radical settler militia Hilltop Youth, which has a long record of violent attacks on Palestinian communities and property, quickly endorsed the calls for retaliation.
Private group chat messages reviewed by Middle East Eye show settler activists demanding immediate action to “erase the village of Tell” within hours of news of the settler’s death breaking. “We want revenge. Not settlements, not promises of more housing units,” one message read. “We want to see blood. There is no comfort without revenge,” the message added, alongside an attached graphic depicting a river of blood. Elchanan Groner, a leading high-profile hilltop settler, declared in a public tribute to the deceased settler that “the village of murderers, Tell, must be erased now” and vowed to avenge what he called the settler’s “pure blood”.
Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to the violence with hardline pledges of his own, posting to his social media platform X that “we will pursue terror everywhere” and that Israel “will settle accounts with them” for the attack. He confirmed he had instructed the Israeli military to demolish the family home of the Palestinian man who killed the settler, and order swift, forceful military action against other villages in the area. Netanyahu also announced he had ordered officials to speed up the legalization of existing unapproved settler outposts and approve the establishment of new outposts — the same sites from which most recent settler attacks, including the Tell raid, originate.
Following the prime minister’s orders, the Israeli military mobilized additional troops to the West Bank for a large-scale security operation centered on the Nablus region in the northern occupied territory, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Friday. Palestinian news agency Wafa has confirmed that Israeli forces have arrested 66 Palestinians across the West Bank to date, 30 of whom are civilians detained directly in Tell. As of Saturday morning, Haaretz added, the military has closed all access points to Tell and nearby Burin, and imposed a full siege on the city of Nablus.
Israeli troops have carried out widespread raids on private Palestinian homes across multiple West Bank communities, carrying out searches, detaining civilians, and leaving widespread property damage in their wake, according to Palestinian local reports. The Quds News Network also reported Friday that Israeli forces raided a major hospital in Nablus to arrest two Palestinian men they claim were involved in the earlier Tell clashes.
As military operations have expanded, settlers have launched coordinated retaliatory attacks on Palestinian communities across the West Bank, acting on the earlier calls for revenge from political and settler leaders. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported Friday that eight Palestinians were injured, one critically, during a settler attack on the village of Far’ata near Qalqilya, where local residents say settlers set fire to residential homes and threw stones at civilian property. Three more Palestinians were injured Friday during a settler raid on the town of Sarra, near Nablus, with settlers again setting homes on fire and damaging civilian property, PRCS confirmed.
Quds News Network documented additional violent settler attacks across multiple hotspots, including Masafer Yatta south of Hebron, and the Nablus-area villages of Awarta and Urif, where settlers set fire to Palestinian land and property and uprooted hundreds of olive trees — a core source of income for many local Palestinian families. In the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan near Salfit, settlers seized control of an empty private Palestinian home and raised the Israeli flag over the building, the outlet added.
Wafa reported similar attacks in Birin east of Hebron, Abu Njeim southeast of Bethlehem, and targeted damage to local water infrastructure in Kafr Malik in the Ramallah governorate. Haaretz also confirmed additional attacks on the Nablus-area villages of Jit, Iraq Burin and Tell, and reported that settlers stabbed and wounded a Palestinian man in Wadi al-Mu’arrjat in the Jordan Valley.