Palestine weekly: West Bank in flames after Tal killings

Published 28 July 2026 · world

On the morning of July 24, more than 20 Israeli settlers from the illegal Havat Gilad settlement attacked Palestinians’ homes on the eastern edge of

On the morning of July 24, more than 20 Israeli settlers from the illegal Havat Gilad settlement attacked Palestinians’ homes on the eastern edge of Tal, southwest of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. Residents initially drove them back, but the settlers returned shortly afterwards, with Israeli soldiers. Videos appear to show a Palestinian man seizing a settler’s rifle and shooting him dead before soldiers shoot the man dead, with further video revealing Israelis continuing to open fire. Four Palestinians from the Ramadan family were killed in the ensuing violence. A settler and an Israeli soldier also died. In the days since, the retaliation from Israeli forces and settlers alike has been overwhelming, with the occupied West Bank gripped by armed attacks, raids, demolitions, road closures and arson. The sequence is familiar: settlers enter a Palestinian village, violence follows, and Israeli military operations rapidly expand. But with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition in its final months in power before elections, this week’s violence escalated well beyond the already grim baseline. ‘Regularise the farms’ Hours after the killings in Tal, Netanyahu ordered a “wide-scale military operation”, including demolishing the alleged Palestinian attacker’s home, revoking work permits in villages he called “terror hotspots”, reinforcing army units and accelerating the “regularisation” of settler farms and outposts – which are illegal even under Israeli law. Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich said the response would be an “iron fist”, while Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said every West Bank village should share the fate of Beit Hanoon in Gaza (flattened after any attack against Israelis). By the weekend, Israeli public radio reported that 26 army battalions were deployed across the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces returned to raid Tal nightly over the next several days, arresting roughly 30 to 50 residents and searching some 70 homes. The campaign was also carried out across Jenin, Tubas, Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem, Tulkarem and occupied East Jerusalem. In Nablus, about 5km (3 miles) from Tal, Israeli forces stormed the hospital, the Wafa news agency reported, handcuffing doctors and nurses before detaining a wounded patient shot during the Tal attack. Four new Israeli settlement outposts appeared overnight next to Tal and the nearby villages of Awarta, Qusra and Jabal Ubayd, according to Israeli public radio and activist Murad Samara.

This adds to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission’s count of 42 new illegal outposts built across the occupied West Bank in the first half of 2026, most of them agricultural, concentrated in the Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus governorates. Weekend of arson, roadblocks, and mosques set ablaze The killings in Tal were the spark for settler violence that, in the days since, has engulfed numerous villages across the West Bank. Israel’s Army Radio counted 30 separate settler attacks across the territory over the weekend. Haaretz reported that influential settler figures ignored appeals from army officers to calm the situation. In Sarra, southwest of Nablus, settlers burned six Palestinian homes and five vehicles and beat three villagers, Mayor Numan Abdullah said. When settlers tried to storm the village again on Saturday, Israeli forces followed to protect them and fired tear gas, leading to Palestinians and journalists suffering from tear gas inhalation. In Farata, east of Qalqilya, settlers set fire to a woodworking shop, two homes and farmland, wounding five Palestinians with gunfire, stones and shrapnel, and emptied the water tank of a civil defence truck responding to the blaze, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. Before dawn on Sunday, settlers set fire to two mosques in so-called “price tag” attacks (retaliatory attacks by Israeli settlers and nationalists against Palestinians). One was the al-Rahma Mosque under construction in Qusra, where Hebrew graffiti reading “revenge for Benayahu” – the Israeli settler killed in Tal – was sprayed on the walls, Qusra Mayor Abdul Azim Wadi said. The second was a mosque in Kour village near Tulkarem, which was defaced with racist slogans, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf. A Palestinian infant not yet two months old survived an arson attack on her family’s home in Urif, only because her grandfather pulled her from her crib as more than 150 settlers set the house alight, relatives told Gaza Now. Early on July 27, a si month-pregnant woman lost her child in Awarta after being prevented from passing a closed gate by soldiers, who searched the woman while she was suffering extreme bleeding. Israeli forces also sealed roads across the northern West Bank, closing entrances to Sinjil, erecting a checkpoint at Nabi Saleh, and repeatedly shutting gates around Jerusalem, while settlers established rolling roadblocks near Nablus and Ramallah, according to Wafa and local activists.