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On September 2, Israeli settlers and soldiers stormed the homes of Palestinian shepherds in al-Mughayyir and attempted to steal their sheep. When villagers protested, Israeli soldiers shot and killed two teenagers from the village, 19-year-old Omar al-Naasan and 16-year-old Khalil Shehadeh.
The village of al-Mughayyir, located in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, is currently on the front line of encroachments by the Israeli army as well as Israeli settlers. Residents say that it faces ethnic cleansing and erasure, with settler expansion and land seizures posing a grave threat to Palestinian communal life.
Hana Masud, a Palestinian American based in Chicago whose family is from al-Mughayyir, explained to Truthout that it is a small village featuring three major extended families, one of them her own. Her father, who is 85 years old, has witnessed Israel’s attacks and encroachment for decades, and has worked to keep the institutions of the village standing. But since October 2023, and over the past few months, the village has felt its continued existence under threat.
Since October 2023, settlers have attacked al-Mughayyir numerous times, and the Israeli army has increasingly restricted community members’ access to their farmlands. The largest attack took place on April 12, 2024, when hundreds of settlers, escorted by Israeli soldiers, stormed the village, setting fire to residents’ homes and cars. One resident, 25-year-old Jihad Abu Alia, was shot in the head and killed, only weeks before his wedding.
For the past year, al-Mughayyir has faced sieges at the hands of the Israeli military, as well as armed settler attacks, with settlers consistently escorted by the Israeli military.
Masud described the siege on al-Mughayyir as having intensified over the past month. “There is a curfew and a siege, and the main entrance of the village has been blocked off,” she said.
Settlers have blocked the main entrance to the village, demanding money from those who enter and exit, and are physically assaulting those who do not comply, Masud said.
“Even international journalists who have come to see what is happening in al-Mughayyir have been beaten up and attacked,” she added.
Al-Mughayyir is in a strategic location in the West Bank, close to two major Israeli settlements and surrounded by spring wells. The village is also next to Israel’s Allon Road, a route that connects Israeli settlements and aims to cement Israeli strategic control of the area according to the Allon Plan, put in place after Israel’s 1967 war and takeover of the West Bank and Gaza.
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“Al-Mughayyir’s location matters not only because of its proximity to settlements, roads, and water sources, but because control over this land has implications for the territorial continuity and viability of Palestinian life in the area,” Masud said.
Masud spoke of relatives of hers who have been killed by Israeli forces over the past few months. In July, her 17-year-old cousin, Fadi, was killed by Israeli forces after rushing to help a family whose home Israeli settlers were threatening to storm. An Israeli soldier shot him in the leg before he reached the house, but with a “dumdum bullet,” Masud explained – the kind that continues to expand upon impact and is banned in international warfare due to its propensity for creating severe and untreatable wounds. This led to complications – blood poisoning and organ failure – before killing him a week later.
Masud also said that, as part of its collective punishment of the village, Israel has been destroying olive groves, which are key to the livelihood and survival of families in the village. In August, Israel reportedly uprooted 10,000 olive trees as it besieged the village for three days. It has also continued to confiscate villagers’ farmlands in al-Mughayyir and the surrounding area.
The escalation in al-Mughayyir comes as Israel moves forward with its E1 settlement project, through which it plans to split the occupied West Bank in half between north and south, preventing a contiguous West Bank.
At the same time, Israeli settler attacks have continued to increase each year since October 2023.
Since October 2023, Israeli military attacks and settler violence have forcibly displaced at least 65 communities, in a scale not seen since 1967. Settler violence has been supported blatantly by the Israeli military.
According to a 2026 report by Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, Israeli expansion and land seizures in the West Bank have “shifted from creeping settler encroachment to a vicious military-backed campaign of territorial theft” since October 2023, including through “direct settler takeovers.”
“For me, the significance of al-Mughayyir is not simply that it is a village being attacked. It is a community whose ability to remain, sustain itself, and reproduce its social and material life is being progressively undermined,” said Masud. “The pressure on the village operates through multiple dimensions at once: restrictions on movement, attacks on residents, access to farmland, destruction of olive groves, threats to homes, and the increasing militarization of everyday life.”
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