Four Palestinian villagers and two Israeli soldiers died Friday in a day of escalating violence across the occupied West Bank that began with a confrontation in the village of Tell and ended with settler attacks on five communities near Nablus. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli soldiers shot and killed four Palestinians in Tell, while the Israeli military reported the deaths of two soldiers, one of whom was a settler serving in a local defense squad. Two other Israelis and four more Palestinians were wounded, according to health officials.
The killings set off a wave of violence that human rights groups warned could spiral further out of control. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the villages of Tell, Iraq Burin and Beit Furik 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," Smotrich said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz called for more troops to the West Bank and the razing of homes of the accused in Tell, as well as collecting weapons and revoking work permits in the village.
What Happened in Tell
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 were fearful of an attack. The village is off-limits to Israelis as part of Area B under the 1993 Oslo Accords struck 33 years ago 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.
In a video of the incident, confirmed by the Israeli military and circulated online by the military correspondent for Israel's Army Radio, two armed men in civilian clothing, as well as at least one Israeli soldier, are shown pointing their weapons at a group of Palestinians who had 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 try to push them back and appear to disarm one of the men before opening fire.
The Israeli 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 footage, which is less than a minute long. The military said the suspect was one of the people killed in the field. It didn't 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.
Settler Attacks and the Pattern of Revenge
Five Palestinian villages surrounding Nablus were attacked by Israeli settlers on Friday, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA. The Israeli military said it was preparing for an "extensive" counterterror operation in the West Bank and was conducting a manhunt for Palestinians suspected of attacking Israelis. It said it had apprehended two during a raid in Nablus. 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 in the wake of the Tell confrontation demanding the government crack down hard on Palestinians. "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.
The towns and villages surrounding 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.
A Documented Cycle
Israeli deaths have repeatedly been followed by revenge against nearby Palestinian communities called "price tag" attacks. That pattern followed the death earlier this year of 18-year-old Yehuda Sherman, who was killed when a Palestinian vehicle struck his ATV near Beit Imrin on March 21. 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.
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. More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel 59 years ago in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.
Human Rights Warnings
Human rights group B'Tselem warned the violence could spin out of control as Israeli settlers and soldiers amass near multiple Palestinian cities. "Israeli violence is spreading across the West Bank, fueled by Israeli politicians openly calling for revenge," said Yuli Novak, the group's executive director. "We know where this leads. Millions of Palestinians are now completely exposed to further attacks, with no one protecting them."
Why This Matters:
Friday's violence illustrates the accelerating breakdown of security and the rule of law in the occupied West Bank, where the line between state military action and settler vigilantism has all but disappeared. When a finance minister publicly calls for the demolition of entire villages and the forced displacement of their populations — echoing the mass demolitions that displaced tens of thousands last year — it's no longer rhetoric. It's policy. The pattern documented by the U.N. after the March killing of Yehuda Sherman has now repeated: an Israeli death, calls for vengeance from senior officials, and organized attacks on dozens of Palestinian communities within days. With 87 Palestinians killed in the West Bank this year alone, including 21 by settlers, and no accountability for those carrying out "price tag" attacks, the occupied territory is sliding toward a level of violence that makes any future political resolution harder to imagine. The two-state solution depends on the possibility of partition. What's happening in the villages around Nablus is the opposite: the erasure of boundaries, the expansion of settlements, and the normalization of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians who have no recourse and no protection.