Palestinians bury four killed in West Bank clash with Israeli settlers

RAMALLAH, PALESTINE: Palestinians in the occupied West Bank village of Tell on Saturday buried four men killed during a clash with Israeli settlers in the village the previous day, local officials said.

“Families of the four martyrs held a common funeral early this morning, around 1:00 am (2200 GMT), but the army restricted who could attend and only about 30 people were able to be there,” Walid Zidan, head of the Tell village council, told AFP.

Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has surged since the Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

On Friday, about 20 Israelis from a nearby settlement entered the village and clashed with residents of Tell defending their property, Zidan told AFP.

A Palestinian villager seized an Israeli’s weapon and shot dead one settler, leading an emergency response team from a nearby settlement to rush to the scene and more gunfire that left four Palestinians and a second Israeli dead, the Israeli military said.

Israeli forces closed gates and checkpoints throughout the West Bank, severely obstructing movement, AFP journalists reported.

By the time of the funeral, movement was still restricted, and Zidan told AFP that the military was still present in the village Saturday morning, having detained 51 residents for questioning, and released just six.

Ghassan Daghlas, the governor of the Nablus region, which includes Tell, attended a funerary prayer at the Nablus hospital where the bodies were before the funeral in Tell.

“Daghlas participated in the funeral procession of the martyrs from the village of Tell, amid a large public turnout of residents from the village and across Nablus Governorate,” his office said in a statement.

An AFP journalist at the hospital reported the four deceased Palestinians’ bodies were laid on stretchers and wrapped in Palestinian flags while friends and relatives said their good-byes.

Ahmed Ramadan, father of one of the deceased, told AFP at the hospital he did not know his son was dead until he reached the medical facility.

“I was asked to go to the hospital… and when I arrived, I found my son had been killed, two of my nephews also been killed, and a fourth nephew died as well,” he said.

Ismail al-Saifi, another resident of Tell, told AFP the settlers’ presence in the village was not an isolated incident, and that locals decided to fight back on Friday.

“The young men bravely confronted them to defend their homes and lands, which was only natural given the frequency of these attacks,” Saifi said.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, but in recent years the number of settlements in the Palestinian territory — which are illegal under international law — has soared.

Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, home to around three million Palestinians.

Israeli figures show that at least 48 Israelis, including civilians and security personnel, have been killed in Palestinian retaliatory attacks or during Israeli military operations since the start of the Gaza war.

According to an AFP tally based on data from the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli soldiers or extremist settlers have killed at least 1,094 Palestinians, including both militants and civilians, over the same period.