The occupied West Bank recorded one of its bloodiest 24-hour stretches in months on Thursday and Friday, with at least five people killed — four Palestinians and one Israeli — and more than a dozen others wounded in a cluster of shootings, stabbings, and settler-related clashes concentrated around Nablus. The violence unfolded even as international attention remained fixed on the US-Iran war, underscoring how the West Bank’s slow-burning crisis continues to intensify largely outside the global spotlight.
The Last 24 Hours
The deadliest incident occurred early Friday near the settlement of Havat Gilad, west of Nablus. According to Israeli military and settler accounts, a group of roughly 60 Israeli hikers — including armed civilian guards — set out from Mount Bracha into Areas A and B of the West Bank, territory normally off-limits to Israeli civilians. Confrontations broke out with Palestinian residents of the nearby village of Tell, reportedly beginning with stone-throwing and escalating into gunfire. One Israeli, 32-year-old Benayahu Mellet, a member of the settlement’s civilian emergency squad, was shot dead, along with four Palestinians; at least six others were wounded. The Israeli military said the hike had not been coordinated with the army, and imposed a temporary cordon around Nablus and Tell as it investigates.
That followed a separate deadly sequence on Thursday. Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men in Beit Furik, east of Nablus, after they tried to extinguish fires that Palestinian officials say were deliberately set by Israeli settlers on farmland near the Derech Avraham outpost. Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, said settlers attacked Palestinians attempting to fight the blaze and that Israeli forces backed the settlers during the confrontation. Separately, the Israeli account says two Palestinian men stabbed and wounded an Israeli civilian, Itamar Cohen, near the fire, after which they were shot dead — one by an armed settler. Hours later, a second Israeli man was stabbed near the settlement of Ganin in the Menashe region and was hospitalized in light condition. A 16-year-old Palestinian boy was also shot in the chest by Israeli forces in Bani Naim, near Hebron, and was reported in stable condition.
Journalists covering the unrest reported being physically blocked and threatened. A crew was confronted by settlers “armed with clubs, rocks and a knife” while attempting to reach a besieged home in Jalud — the same location where a US citizen, Saif Musallet, was beaten to death by settlers almost exactly one year earlier.
Part of a Broader, Escalating Pattern
Friday’s bloodshed did not occur in isolation. It is the latest data point in a months-long surge in West Bank violence that rights monitors say has reached record levels in 2026:
• Settler attacks at record pace. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported last month that Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinians or their property an average of six times a day so far this year — the highest rate ever recorded.
• Coordinated village raids. In mid-July, dozens of settlers stormed a Palestinian village near Yatta, torching a mosque and homes in what witnesses called a coordinated assault. Similar arson attacks have hit farmland and vehicles in Masafer Yatta, Tulkarem, Turmus Ayya, Jalud, and Ramin in recent weeks, frequently with no arrests made despite IDF confirmation the attacks occurred.
• Mass arrests and military pressure. Palestinian rights monitors reported roughly 32 arrests across the West Bank in a single day last week, with clashes and mass arrest operations becoming a near-weekly occurrence, particularly around Hebron.
• Settlement expansion and legal entrenchment. Israel’s security cabinet has approved a 1.3 billion shekel ($428 million) plan for 34 new settlements, extended legal status to 19 previously unauthorized outposts, and granted “city status” to the settlement of Givat Ze’ev — a move UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he is “deeply alarmed” by, and which the UN maintains does not change the area’s status as occupied Palestinian territory under international law. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has taken additional bureaucratic steps to make settlement expansion harder for a future government to reverse.
• Disproportionate demolitions. A rights group report this week found that Israeli demolitions of Palestinian structures in the West Bank vastly outpaced demolitions of Israeli structures in 2025.
• Rare accountability, mostly absent. Indictments of settlers for violence against Palestinians remain, in the Times of Israel’s own description, “highly rare, with convictions even less common” — a pattern illustrated this week when a judge eased release conditions for a settler charged over the June Huwara riots, in which eight Palestinians were wounded.
• Amnesty International’s assessment. In June, the rights group accused the Israeli government of pursuing a campaign amounting to “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank amid the surge in state-backed settler violence and forced displacement.
Even Israeli officials have acknowledged the severity of the trend: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously described extremist settler violence as a “spreading cancer,” while the IDF says it is working to contain what one official called an atmosphere of “revenge” following Friday’s killings.
What Comes Next
The IDF has bolstered troop deployments around Nablus and says it is investigating both the unauthorized hike near Havat Gilad and the settler role in Thursday’s fires and clashes. Israeli officials have voiced concern about reprisal attacks in the coming days, while Palestinian residents describe a worsening climate of fear as the fires, raids, and shootings compound month over month. With the world’s attention consumed by the US-Iran conflict, the West Bank’s escalation continues largely underreported — even as its casualty toll and displacement figures increasingly rival the intensity of past major flare-ups.