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

ByLucy Williamson Middle East correspondent, Reporting fromal-Mughayyir, occupied West Bank.

Key points

• All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law.
• "At the beginning of 2025, settler attacks were few, due to the army's interventions, " he remarked.
• Sheep farmer Sami Abu Rahma firmly believes that some violent settlers are targeting children.
• Six individuals, including three pupils at the school, have been killed in al-Mughayyir this year, in a surge of settler-related violence against Palestinians.
• Hadi al-Naasan, an ambulance driver in the village, remarked there had been a shift in the behaviour of Israeli forces over the past year.

On the first day of the new Palestinian school year, the head-teacher of al-Mughayyir boys school arrived at work before dawn, walking past the freshly installed barbed wire fencing and reinforced school gates as the sun began creeping through olive trees around the village, deep inside the occupied West Bank.

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

Six individuals, including three pupils at the school, have been killed in al-Mughayyir this year, in a surge of 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 additionally killed by an Israeli soldier in the same attack.

Waheed remarked he was trying to move pupils to safety inside the school gate when the settler fired towards them. Mobile phone footage demonstrates 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, " remarked Waheed. "We lost him."

As students hid behind the walls of their classrooms, or lay on the floor, he informed me that bullets continued hitting the school building.

Notably, the Israeli military remarked in an official note at the time that stones had been hurled at a car carrying "civilians including a reservist soldier", and that the reservist had secured out of the vehicle and fired at suspects.

Israeli media documented the reservist was afterwards suspended from duty and an investigation introduced. Since that day, the casualties have grown alongside parents' fears.

Over the summer, two more pupils were shot dead 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 cases, Israel's army remarked its forces responded to instigators of "a violent riot".

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

Meanwhile, the school sits right on the edge of Al-Mughayyir, an isolated village north-east of Ramallah, increasingly surrounded by Jewish settler outposts, and regularly blocked by Israeli forces who frequently operate an ad-hoc checkpoint at the entrance.

Bassam al-Assaf has installed a long barbed-wire fence around the compound and reinforced the school gates, to try and reassure parents. Ambulance crews are now stationed on the road outside, and a number of parents have volunteered to wait outside the school all day as an extra layer of protection.

BBC tracks one week of Israeli settler violence in occupied West Bank. Palestinian teens killed during settler attack on West Bank village.

'We expect our sons to be killed, ' father of teen shot dead in West Bank tells BBC.

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

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

According to But he, fear was mixed with a determination not to let the threat from settler attacks force them out.

Lined up in the playground for their first assembly, pupils heard the instructions repeated by teachers again and again throughout the day: if soldiers or settlers approach the school, don't shout, don't go near them, don't react.

As Israeli soldiers stood close by, just over an hour after classes began, settlers were spotted through the school windows: two men, driving sheep through Palestinian fields a couple of hundred metres from the school. Minutes afterwards, another settler with a flock of sheep appeared.

They have got closer to the village since April, remarked Abu Naem. They applied to keep their sheep behind this, but now the soldiers bring the settlers up to the village.

We asked the Israeli army for its response to all the allegations in this report, but they were unable to provide one before publication.

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

But one of the ambulance crews stationed outside the school remarked that, rather than remove illegal settlements, Israeli soldiers had begun supporting and enabling settler incursions into the village.

Hadi al-Naasan, an ambulance driver in the village, remarked there had been a shift in the behaviour of Israeli forces 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 remarked. "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 additionally much higher – and the number of child injuries is higher too."

Hadi, along with other residents of al-Mughayyir, believes that some Israeli settlers are now deliberately targeting children so as to put pressure on the adults in the village to leave their homes.

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

And it 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".

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

As two gunshots are heard, footage from security cameras at the farm demonstrates Salim pointing, and shouting to his parents that settlers are approaching, before running for shelter with his siblings and mother. Salim is seen grabbing his shoulder.

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

Notably, the man who shot his son, he remarked, lived in an illegal settler outpost that appeared next to the farm in June – and had previously shot at Salim in the same area a week before.

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

Sami remarked he was the last sheep farmer left in the area, the others all chased away by settler attacks. The settler who shot his son had informed the family repeatedly to leave their land, he stated.

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

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

For now, palestinian parents fear for children' s lives at school as settler attacks grow remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.