Coordinated settler raids across the West Bank involve arson, assaults, and forced exhumation

Dozens of Israeli settlers launched coordinated raids across the occupied West Bank on Friday, 9 May 2026, resulting in widespread arson and physical assaults on Palestinian civilians. The violence targeted multiple locations, including Khirbet Shuweika south of Hebron, al-Lubban Asharqiya south of Nablus, and Abu Falah northeast of Ramallah. In these incidents, settlers set homes and vehicles alight, attacked residents with sharp instruments, and stole property.

Specific accounts from the Palestinian Wafa news agency describe severe injuries sustained in Khirbet Shuweika, where a man and his child were struck with sharp instruments and subsequently taken to hospital with head injuries. In al-Lubban Asharqiya, settlers torched a residence before members of the Palestinian Civil Defence arrived to extinguish the blaze. Further north in Abu Falah, security sources reported that settlers burned a citizen's vehicle and inscribed racist slogans on the walls of houses.

The raids also involved the forced exhumation of a deceased individual in the village of al-Asa'asa in Jenin. Israeli forces compelled residents to dig up a newly buried body, citing the proximity of the grave site to an illegal Israeli settlement as the justification for the disturbance. In the town of Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem, Israeli forces targeted worshippers leaving a local mosque with tear gas and sound bombs, locking a number of people inside the building.

In the Burak Sulayman area south of Bethlehem, a group of Palestinians picnicking was forced to flee after Israeli forces fired stun grenades at them. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society treated two individuals for tear gas inhalation and evacuated five others from the scene. Additional arrests followed the violence, with four men detained in Battir while hiking near a railway line and three more arrested during a subsequent raid in Nablus the following day.

Human rights groups report that Israeli authorities have permitted these settlers to operate with total impunity during the attacks. This escalation occurs against a backdrop of over 700,000 Israelis currently living in illegal settlements in the region. In February 2026, the Israeli government approved a plan to claim large areas of the occupied West Bank as state property, a move that has intensified tensions in the territory.

Clashes also erupted in Silwad, northeast of Ramallah, following settler attacks on residents. The pattern of violence, ranging from arson and physical assault to the use of crowd control weapons against civilians, highlights the ongoing security challenges in the occupied territories.