Palestinian parents fear for children's lives at school as settler attacks grow

**Palestinian parents fear for children's lives at school as settler attacks grow**

On the first day of the new Palestinian school year, the head-teacher of al-Mughayyir boys school arrived at work before dawn, passing newly installed barbed wire fencing and reinforced school gates as the sun started to rise through olive trees around the village, deep in the occupied West Bank.

"We are scared," Bassam al Assaf told me. "The students are afraid, and their parents are afraid."

This year, six people, among them three pupils from the school, have been killed in al-Mughayyir amid a surge in settler-related violence against Palestinians. One of them, 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan, was shot dead by a settler outside the school gates in April.

"I was inside my classroom and two little students came rushing to tell me there were settlers close to the school wall," remembers English teacher Waheed Abu Naem, whose brother Jihad was also killed by an Israeli soldier in the same attack.

Waheed said he was trying to get pupils to safety inside the school gate when the settler fired at them. Mobile phone footage captures the moment Aws was shot.

"When I turned him onto his back, I saw lots of blood coming from his nose and mouth, and the bullet in his head," said Waheed. "We lost him."

He said bullets kept striking the school building while students hid behind classroom walls or lay on the floor.

At the time, the Israeli military said in a statement that stones had been thrown at a car carrying "civilians including a reservist soldier", and that the reservist had exited the vehicle and fired at suspects.

Israeli media later reported that the reservist was suspended from duty and that an investigation was opened.

Since then, the death toll has risen along with parents' anxiety.

Over the summer, two more pupils were killed by Israeli forces during settler attacks and incursions in the village, along with a 19-year-old who had just left the school.

In both incidents, Israel's army said its forces responded to instigators of "a violent riot".

With three empty desks in the classrooms, some parents were hesitant to send their children back for the new school year.

The school stands at the edge of Al-Mughayyir, an isolated village north-east of Ramallah that is increasingly hemmed in by Jewish settler outposts and regularly sealed off by Israeli forces, who often run an ad-hoc checkpoint at the entrance.

Bassam al-Assaf has put up a long barbed-wire fence around the compound and strengthened the school gates in an effort to reassure parents. Ambulance crews are now positioned on the road outside, and several parents have volunteered to remain outside the school all day as an added layer of protection.

"I came because it makes the children feel their parents are with them, that they are safe, it gives them a kind of security," said Haroon Bishara, whose boys are in the first and second grades.

"We fear for our children more this year," he told me. "We know the situation is not safe at the school."

Still, he said fear was matched by a resolve not to let settler attacks drive them away.

As pupils lined up in the playground for their first assembly, teachers repeated the same instructions throughout the day: if soldiers or settlers come near the school, don't shout, don't go near them, don't react.

A little over an hour after lessons started, settlers were seen through the school windows: two men driving sheep through Palestinian fields a few hundred metres from the school, while Israeli soldiers stood nearby.

Minutes later, another settler appeared with a flock of sheep.

"They have got closer to the village since April," said Abu Naem. "They used to keep their sheep behind this [hill], but now the soldiers bring the settlers up to the village."

All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law. Many of the small ad-hoc settler outposts that have spread around al-Mughayyir are also illegal under Israeli law.

But one of the ambulance crews stationed outside the school said that instead of removing illegal settlements, Israeli soldiers had started supporting and enabling settler incursions into the village.

Hadi al-Naasan, an ambulance driver in the village, said Israeli forces had changed their behaviour over the past year, and that the rise in Palestinian deaths and injuries in al-Mughayyir this year reflected that.

"At the beginning of 2025, settler attacks were few, due to the army's interventions," he said. "In 2026, the situation changed completely: the settlers became fully protected by the occupation soldiers. This year, the number of martyrs is higher, the number of injuries is also much higher – and the number of child injuries is higher too."

Hadi, like other residents of al-Mughayyir, believes some Israeli settlers are now deliberately targeting children to pressure adults in the village to leave their homes.

A UN Commission of Inquiry published in June found that settler attacks "have instrumentalized children, external as part of a broader coercive strategy to drive Palestinians off their land."

It also described "a pattern of settlers intentionally targeting Palestinian children" while they were playing near their homes, walking to and from school, tending to farms or herding livestock, "turning everyday spaces into sites of fear".

Israel dismissed the report as a "libellous sham".

Sheep farmer Sami Abu Rahma is convinced that some violent settlers are targeting children.

At the end of July, his nine-year-old son Salim was shot and injured while playing with his siblings on the family sheep farm outside al-Mughayyir. The bullet remains lodged in his arm.

Security camera footage from the farm shows Salim pointing and shouting to his parents that settlers are approaching, before running for shelter with his siblings and mother, as two gunshots are heard. Salim is seen clutching his shoulder.

"In that moment, you stop thinking; you just feel fear," Sami told me. "Fear that, God forbid, [the attacker] was shooting to kill. The first thing in your mind is losing the most precious thing you have."

He said the man who shot his son lived in an illegal settler outpost that appeared beside the farm in June – and had shot at Salim in the same area a week earlier.

"You no longer feel you can keep them safe in the street, or even at school," he said. "The settlers don't want us to stay here, [they want us to feel] as if there's no future for us here."

Sami said he was the last sheep farmer left in the area, after the others were driven away by settler attacks. He said the settler who shot his son had repeatedly told the family to leave their land.

"No matter how determined you might be to stay," he added, "what do you do when settlers start shooting your kids?"

The regional settlers council told us that an off-duty soldier was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the shooting.

"We regret any harm to innocent people, Jews or Arabs, and oppose any act of violence that violates the law," it said in a statement, adding that it rejected "the attempt to attribute to the entire settlement community in Judea and Samaria acts that have not yet been determined by an investigation, as well as the baseless claim that lawful sheep grazing or Jewish presence in the area are part of a deliberate plan to harm children or drive residents from their homes."

Al-Mughayyir reflects a wider pattern across the occupied West Bank, where more illegal settler outposts are encircling Palestinian villages, Israeli forces are giving settlers more protection, and attacks are shifting from farms and grazing land into built-up areas where women and children face greater danger.

"Children, seeing the army enter, don't grasp the gravity of the situation," said the local ambulance crew, Hadi al-Naasan. "Adults are more aware of how events can unfold."

UN figures indicate that the number of Palestinians injured during settler attacks by Israeli soldiers or settlers has risen sharply this year to an average of three injuries a day, and that injuries caused directly by settlers themselves are also higher.

This increase has come alongside an expansion of Israeli settlements and settler outposts in the West Bank.

All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, and Israel's fiercely pro-settlement government is facing mounting international pressure - including from the UK, which is expected to announce sanctions this week in response to Israeli settlement policies.

The arrest of some violent settlers and a reported plan by Israel's prime minister to dismantle illegal outposts in the West Bank have so far not halted attacks, nor reassured Palestinians who say outposts previously demolished by Israeli authorities were quickly rebuilt.

With Israeli elections less than two months away, Israel's Finance Ministry pushed ahead this week with plans to take over land registration in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a move described by the Israeli settlement monitor Peace Now as "a clear step towards annexation".

Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has blamed settler violence on a tiny extremist minority, calling them "150 juvenile delinquents" in a recent television interview.

Since the beginning of 2025, the UN has recorded 316 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers, and more than 5,600 injured, to the end of July 2026. It says 20 Israelis were killed over the same period, including one child and eight members of the security forces, and 123 Israelis injured.

Palestinian parents who have remained in villages like al-Mughayyir despite escalating settler violence are now living with a growing fear of losing their children if they stay on their land.