MUKHMAS, West Bank (AP) — Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank shot and killed a Palestinian American during an attack on a village, the Palestinian Health Ministry and a witness said Thursday.
Raed Abu Ali, a resident of Mukhmas, said a group of settlers came to the village on Wednesday afternoon where they attacked a farmer, sparking clashes after residents intervened. Israeli forces later arrived, and during the violence, armed settlers killed 19-year-old Nasrallah Abu Siyam and wounded others.
Abu Ali said the army fired tear gas, stun grenades and live ammunition. The Israeli military admitted to using what it called “riot dispersal methods” after receiving reports of Palestinians throwing stones, but denied that its forces fired during the clashes.
“When the settlers saw the army, they were encouraged and started firing live bullets,” Abu Ali said. He added that they hit the injured with sticks after they fell to the ground.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed the death of Abu Siyam from serious injuries sustained on Wednesday afternoon near the village east of Ramallah.
Abu Siyam’s killing is the latest in a wave of violence in the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces and settlers killed 240 Palestinians last year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Palestinians killed 17 Israelis during the same period, six of whom were soldiers. The Palestinian Authority’s Wall and Settlements Resistance Commission said Abu Siyam was the first Palestinian killed by settlers in 2026.
Mukhmas and the surrounding area – much of it under Israeli civilian and military administration – has become a hotspot for settler attacks, including arson and attacks, as well as the construction of outposts that Israeli law considers illegal.
The Israeli military said late Wednesday that unnamed suspects shot the Palestinians, who were later evacuated for medical treatment. He did not say if any were arrested.
Abu Siyam’s mother told The Associated Press that he is an American citizen, making him the second Palestinian American killed by Israeli settlers in less than a year.
A US embassy spokesman said it “condemns this violence”.
Palestinians and rights groups say authorities are failing to prosecute settlers or hold them accountable for the violence.
The UN says Israel’s actions in the West Bank could amount to ethnic cleansing
The UN human rights office on Thursday accused Israel of war crimes and said practices that displace Palestinians and alter the demographic makeup of the occupied West Bank “raise concerns of ethnic cleansing.”
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, citing findings collected from November 2024 to October 2025, said Israel is engaged in a “concerted and accelerated effort to consolidate annexation” while maintaining a system “of maintaining the oppression and domination of the Palestinians”.
Residents of Palestinian villages and pastoral communities have been increasingly displaced as Israeli settlements and outposts expand. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Israeli rights group B’Tselem says about 45 Palestinian communities have been completely emptied amid Israeli demolition orders and settler attacks.
In addition, the office said Israeli military operations in the northern West Bank “used means and methods designed for war,” including lethal airstrikes and the forcible transfer of civilians from their homes. Israel also “banned” residents from returning to their homes in refugee camps in the northern West Bank. The operation, which Israel said targeted the militants, displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians.
The report also accused Palestinian security forces of using unnecessary lethal force in the same areas, killing at least eight people, and noted that the Palestinian Authority had engaged in “intimidation, detention and ill-treatment of journalists, human rights defenders and others deemed critical of its rule”.
Neither Israel’s Foreign Ministry nor the Palestinian Authority responded to requests for comment. Israel has repeatedly accused the UN rights office of anti-Israel bias.
Last year, the UN human rights monitor warned of what it called “an ongoing genocide in Gaza,” with “living conditions increasingly incompatible with (Palestinians’) continued existence. Their report on Thursday also warned of demographic changes in Gaza that raise concerns of ethnic cleansing.”
The report shows that imprisoned Palestinian journalists have been tortured
The Committee to Protect Journalists said dozens of Palestinian journalists who were detained in Israel during the Gaza war endured conditions including physical assaults, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation, sexual violence and medical neglect.
CPJ has documented the detention of at least 94 Palestinian journalists and one media worker in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel during the war. Thirty are still in custody, CPJ said.
Half of the journalists, according to the report, had never been charged with a crime and were held under Israel’s administrative detention system, which allows suspects deemed security risks to be detained for six months, renewable indefinitely.
Israel’s prison services did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report, but dismissed a similar report in January about conditions for Palestinian prisoners as “false allegations”, saying it operates legally, is subject to surveillance and investigates complaints.
UN development chief says clearing rubble from Gaza will take 7 years
The vast destruction in Gaza will take at least seven years just to remove the rubble, according to the United Nations Development Programme.
Alexander De Croo, the former Belgian prime minister who has just returned from Gaza, said the UNDP had only removed 0.5 percent of the rubble and that the people of Gaza were facing “the worst living conditions we have ever seen”.
De Croo said 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million people live in “very, very rudimentary tents” amid the rubble, which poses health hazards and a danger of exploding weapons.
He said UNDP has managed to build 500 improved housing units and has another 4,000 that are ready, but estimates the actual need is 200,000 to 300,000 units. The units are meant to be used temporarily while reconstruction takes place. He called on Israel to expand access to goods and items needed for reconstruction and for the private sector to begin development.
___ Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Edith Lederer in the United Nations, Sam Metz in Jerusalem and Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel contributed to this report.
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