Attacks on West Bank villages: organized revenge by Israeli settlers after the death of a young shepherd

A noticeably organized outbreak of violence. In mid-April, tensions reignited in the occupied West Bank after a 14-year-old Israeli shepherd was found dead, a day after he disappeared while tending his sheep. Israeli police immediately concluded that he was “killed in a terrorist attack.”

At the same time, armed settlers stormed several villages, demanding revenge, although the identity of the alleged murder was never established. The attacks targeted Palestinian towns north of Ramallah and then spread to Hebron (south) and Nablus (centre). The Palestinian health minister said four were killed, including a 17-year-old boy.

Call to “burn” entire villages

According to a BBC investigation released this Monday, the renewed violence was orchestrated. On WhatsApp, a former far-right Israeli lawmaker asked on Saturday morning (hours after the young shepherd’s disappearance) to go door-to-door in the surrounding Palestinian villages and begin “collective punishment against the murderous Arab population.”

The woman, an extremist settler suspected of involvement in the murder of a Palestinian last summer, then gave a list of several meeting places, the BBC reported. Soon the same list was sent to other groups of settlers with calls to “destroy the enemy,” “destroy the animals,” and “burn the Duma to the ground.” The mayor of this village near Nablus said 15 houses and 10 livestock farms were burned.

According to British media reports, which rely on exchanges in WhatsApp groups between settlers, as well as testimony from Palestinians, the violence was directed against ordinary citizens, with no clear link to the disappearance of the young Israeli, sometimes in villages several kilometers away from where he tended his sheep.