Israeli settlers and soldiers kill three Palestinians in West Bank village

Israeli settlers and soldiers killed three Palestinians in their village near Ramallah on Saturday night, the third deadly attack in a week of surging Israeli violence across the occupied West Bank.Israeli settlers have shot dead five civilians during invasions of Palestinian olive groves, villages and grazing land, in the brief period since Israel and the US launched a new war on Iran at the end of February. A sixth person died on Saturday after inhaling military-grade tear gasused by the Israeli army.The escalating regional conflict diverted diplomatic, media and political attention away from occupied Palestine, even as Israeli authorities imposed a new blockade on Gaza and brought in sweeping movement restrictions across the occupied West Bank, and settlers intensified Israeli attacks on Palestinian land, crops, livestock and homes.“Under the cover of war, the cooperation between the military and Israeli settler militias is deepening the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank,” Israel-based rights group B’tselem said this week.“Settlers deliberately graze livestock in Palestinians’ cultivated fields, destroy crops and stored food, steal livestock, and vandalise solar panels and water tanks. Settlers have also used bulldozers to raze and take over privately owned Palestinian land.”The most recent killings came on Saturday night after Palestinians from Abu Falah tried to stop a group of masked Israelis vandalising olive trees outside the town. Dozens of armed settlers later descended on the town, relatives and neighbours of the dead told the Guardian, and killed Thaer Faruq Hamayel, 30, and Fara Jawdat Hamayel, 57. Both men had been shot in the head.Israeli security forces who arrived later to the confrontation fired military-grade tear gas into the narrow streets of Abu Falah. Muhammad Hassan, a 54-year-old father of four, died after inhaling it.“What is happening now is extremely dangerous. The world is preoccupied with the war with Iran, while settlers, protected by the Israeli army, continue to attack innocent civilians,” said Amin Shuman, a member of the local council in Abu Falah. “No one is being held accountable.”Settler attacks had intensified over the last week and on Saturday they arrived armed with sticks, slingshots, pistols, and M16 rifles, said Hamid Hamayel, a cousin of Thaer. “Their goal is to confiscate the land and force us to leave. Such attacks would not happen without the close cooperation between the settlers and the Israeli army.”The Israeli military commander for the occupied West Bank, Maj Gen Avi Bluth, described the shootings in Abu Falah as an “unacceptable incident”. There would be “zero tolerance for civilians who take the law into their own hand”, he added, and said those responsible would be brought to justice.Bluth has not commented directly on two deadly shootings carried out earlier in the week by Israeli settler reservists wearing army uniforms, in which three Palestinians were killed and a fourthcritically injured.On Monday two brothers were killed when they tried to prevent settlers damaging olive trees in Qaryut, a small Palestinian village in the northern West Bank. Muhammad Taha Muammar, 52, was shot in the head, and Fahim Taha Muammar, 48, was shot in his lower body. When the Israeli military arrived they arrested more than 20 Palestinians from the village and road closures prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded for more than an hour, B’tselem said.The day after the shooting the Israeli military said it had confiscated the weapon of a reservist, Israeli media reported. A spokesperson said on Sunday that the military was treating the attack with “utmost severity” and was investigating.On Saturday there was another killing in the opposite end of the West Bank. Settlers drove livestock into Palestinian land in the village of Wadi a-Rakhim, south Hebron Hills, and opened fire at point-blank range when residents tried to stop them.Amir Muhammad Shanaran, 28, was killed and his brother Khaled was critically injured. Footage filmed moments after the attack, and shared by B’tselem, shows an Israeli in army uniform holding an assault rifle a few feet from one of the men who is collapsed on the ground. The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment on the shooting.Since October 2023, violent settlers have used Israel’s army as a vehicle to escalate their campaign against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank. Reserve units drawn from settlements have functioned as vigilante militias, according to Israeli soldiers and activists and the United Nations.Breaking the Silence, an advocacy group for former Israeli soldiers, said settlers were carrying out an average of 10 attacks daily across the West Bank, under cover of the war. “As often happens when the media attention shifts, Israel seized the moment to intensify its attacks against Palestinians,” the group said on social media. “As missiles fly and Iran again dominates the headlines, don’t look away from the ethnic cleansing unfolding in the West Bank.”Sufian Taha and Quique Kierszenbaum contributed reporting