Nablus: Israeli army forces killed two Palestinians and injured several others, including children, in military raids in the West Bank on Sunday, as illegal settlers continued their assaults in the occupied territory, an activist and local media said.
According to Anadolu Agency, the official news agency Wafa reported that a Palestinian man was killed by Israeli fire in eastern Nablus in the northern West Bank. The incident occurred as Israeli forces opened fire toward Palestinians and their homes in the city following clashes with local residents.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the deceased man as 23-year-old Qusai Nassar. In a subsequent statement, the ministry announced the death of another Palestinian, 37-year-old Wissam Ishtiya, noting that he had been arrested while injured before being declared dead. Meanwhile, in the town of al-Khader, south of Bethlehem, Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters during a raid, leading to several residents suffering temporary asphyxiation. Two Palestinians were detained in the raid, with another arrested in Hebron in the southern West Bank.
Israeli forces further detained two Palestinians in Nablus, three in Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, and three others in Ramallah. Concurrently, illegal Israeli settlers forced Palestinian shepherds to vacate their grazing lands in the northern Jordan Valley, northeast of the occupied West Bank. Local activist Aref Daraghmeh reported a significant increase in settler attacks targeting Palestinians and their properties in the area.
The Palestinian Jordan Valley, home to around 13,000 illegal Israeli settlers across 38 settlements and about 65,000 Palestinians in 34 communities, remains a critical point of contention. Israel controls over 80% of the region, viewing it as a security and economic buffer zone, and seeks to maintain its military presence there in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians. Palestinians assert that they cannot establish an independent state without the Jordan Valley, which constitutes about 30% of the West Bank and is abundant in natural resources.
Rawhi Fattouh, chairman of the Palestinian National Council, stated, "The forced displacement of Palestinians, particularly in the Jordan Valley, is not separate from the genocide being carried out by the occupation government in Gaza; it is a unified colonial plan that uses killing, starvation, and siege as tools of ethnic cleansing." The Al-Baydar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights reported that 50 Palestinian families from the Arab Al-Mleihat Bedouin community were forcibly displaced from Jericho by illegal Israeli settlers.
In a separate incident, illegal Israeli settlers began bulldozing Palestinian farmlands in the village of Umm Safa in Ramallah to expand a recently established settler outpost. Municipal chief Marwan Sabah reported that nearly 40 dunams of land north of the village were bulldozed. Data from the Israeli government indicates that illegal settlers staged 414 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank in the first half of this year, marking a 30% increase from 2024.
Since the onset of Israel's war on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, at least 991 Palestinians have been killed and over 7,000 injured in the West Bank by Israeli forces and settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.