For over 20 consecutive hours, Israeli military forces have blocked the sole access point to the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian state news agency Wafa has confirmed. The closure comes in the wake of a coordinated incursion into the village Friday, where Israeli troops were joined by armed Israeli settlers who carried out targeted attacks on local residents and attempted to seize livestock belonging to Palestinian families.
Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, citing on-the-ground local sources, reports that settlers successfully stole 15 lambs during the raid, and one additional sheep was found shot and wounded. Three Palestinian villagers were injured in the violence: one was hit by live ammunition fired by Israeli forces, while the other two were assaulted and beaten by settlers. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, combined forces of Israeli troops and settlers blocked medical ambulances from reaching the wounded, delaying urgent care.
Amin Abu Aliya, head of al-Mughayyir’s local village council, told Wafa that Israeli forces have only opened the blocked entrance for a few minutes at irregular intervals, leaving residents trapped inside with limited access to outside resources. He emphasized that the deliberate restriction of civilian entry and exit is part of a deliberate strategy to force Palestinian communities to abandon their land in the area.
Abu Aliya’s warning comes as the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a formal appeal Saturday, calling on the international community to step in and protect residents of al-Mughayyir amid a broad escalation of settler violence across the occupied West Bank. Ministry officials characterize the siege on al-Mughayyir, which includes indiscriminate targeting of civilian residents, as one component of a structured campaign to eliminate Palestinian presence from the territory. The ministry stated that these actions fall under an official Israeli policy of “killing, terrorism and forced displacement,” and warned against what it calls Israel’s ongoing implementation of displacement and extermination policies against Palestinian communities.
Al-Mughayyir is not the only Palestinian community facing this kind of coordinated siege. A parallel incident has been unfolding in the West Bank village of Qusra, located near the city of Nablus. Earlier this month, Israeli settlers launched a siege of three residential homes in Qusra’s Ras al-Ain neighborhood, trapping multiple Palestinian families inside their properties. The ongoing blockade has cut off trapped residents from access to basic essential supplies, including drinking water, electricity and food.
The Israeli military has installed a permanent locked gate at Qusra’s main entrance, forcing all Palestinian residents and visitors traveling to the village to use unpaved alternate routes that are routinely blocked by Israeli soldiers. Just this Wednesday, the military added three new permanent roadblocks surrounding the peak of Ras al-Ain hill, physically severing the connection between the besieged homes and the rest of Qusra’s lower inhabited areas.
Attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian homes, businesses and agricultural land in the occupied West Bank have been a systemic, longstanding issue for decades, parallel to the continuous expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory. But independent analysts and Palestinian officials note that these state-backed assaults have grown dramatically more intense and frequent since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in October 2023.
This reporting was framed by original independent coverage from Middle East Eye, a publication that provides unfiltered, independent analysis of developments across the Middle East and North Africa region.