Israeli soldiers shot and killed four Palestinians in the village of Tell in the northern West Bank on Friday, after clashes that followed the killing of an Israeli settler and left two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinian villagers dead. The Israeli military said it was preparing for an “extensive” counterterror operation in the West Bank, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called for more troops, home demolitions, weapons seizures and the revocation of work permits in Tell.
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The violence moved fast. Israeli troops were widely deployed across the occupied West Bank after clashes broke out Friday, and the military said it was conducting a manhunt for Palestinians suspected of attacking Israelis. It said it had apprehended two during a raid in Nablus. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli soldiers killed four Palestinians in Tell. The military reported the deaths of two soldiers, one of whom was a settler in a local defense squad. Two other Israelis and four more Palestinians were wounded, health officials said.
Netanyahu and Katz said in a joint statement that “the security forces must be allowed to act freely and with full force against terrorism.” That same statement called for razing the homes of the accused in Tell, collecting weapons and revoking work permits in the village. Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli Finance Minister, went further. He said Tell, Iraq Burin and Beit Furik “need to look exactly like the refugee camps in Nablus and Tulkarm,” referring to the mass demolition campaign that displaced tens of thousands in the West Bank towns last year. “It is necessary to evacuate the population there for their protection and to clear these villages of terrorist infrastructure,” he said. “A sharp, determined, and unequivocal military action is required here and now.”
The language is familiar. The machinery is too.
Settlers, Soldiers and the Oslo Box
The exact circumstances of Friday’s incident remained unclear, but Israeli media reports and interviews with local Palestinian officials suggested a group of settlers entered Tell and were confronted by residents who feared an attack. The village is off-limits to Israelis as part of Area B under the 1993 Oslo Accords struck after the first Palestinian Intifada. According to the Israeli military, one of the villagers took one of the settlers’ weapons and fired on the group, killing Benayahu Mellet, 32, a security guard in a settlement nearby.
A video of the incident, confirmed by the Israeli military and circulated online by the military correspondent for Israel’s Army Radio, showed two armed men in civilian clothing, as well as at least one Israeli soldier, pointing their weapons at a group of Palestinians gathered in a field. At one point, the two armed men rushed toward several Palestinian residents with their guns drawn. In the footage, the residents tried to push them back and appeared to disarm one of the men before opening fire.
The military said it killed the man who took the settler’s weapon and that he was armed when soldiers shot him. But a separate video, published by Israeli media outlets and confirmed by the military, showed Israeli forces firing on a group of Palestinians in the same field who were already on the ground. More than a dozen gunshots can be heard in the less-than-a-minute clip. The military said the suspect was one of the people killed in the field. It did not respond to questions about why soldiers killed the other men — all of whom were related — or how long after the original altercation the killings took place.
Later, army chief Eyal Zamir said he was sending more troops to the occupied West Bank. Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, a settler group in the northern West Bank, posted a video online demanding a hard crackdown. “We demand an iron fist and for the government to carry out a wide military operation against the Palestinian Authority and against Hamas,” he said.
Who Pays for the Order
Five Palestinian villages surrounding Nablus were attacked by Israeli settlers on Friday, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA. The towns and villages around Nablus sit in one of the most violent parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In addition to newly approved settlements, at least nine farming outposts dot the area, and attacks by Israeli settlers, army incursions and confrontations have become frequent.
Palestinians and human rights groups have increasingly documented armed settlers entering villages in the area. Livestock theft, arson and the defacement of mosques are routinely reported. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, since the beginning of this year, 87 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank governorates, including 21 by Israeli settlers.
Israeli deaths have repeatedly been followed by revenge against nearby Palestinian communities called “price tag” attacks. That pattern followed the March 21 death of 18-year-old Yehuda Sherman, who was killed when a Palestinian vehicle struck his ATV near Beit Imrin. Senior politicians, including Smotrich, attended Sherman’s funeral and called for vengeance. At the time, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented 32 settler attacks affecting 30 Palestinian villages and communities across the West Bank, about a third near Nablus governorate over the following two days. Settlers torched homes and vehicles, vandalized property and assaulted residents, injuring at least 32 Palestinians, according to OCHA.
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip. The numbers keep climbing. The bodies do too.