Israel razes East Jerusalem building, displacing dozens of Arabs

Settlers reportedly open fire on Palestinians, attempt to take over home as attacks surge

Several wounded by gunfire during the olive harvest near village of Aqraba, as Palestinian tells ToI that settlers have been laying siege to his home since attacking it last night

By ToI Staff, Nurit Yohanan and AFP Today, 6:37 pm
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Agence France-Presse’s (AFP) photographer Jaafar Ashtiyeh is carried by Palestinian first responders to seek medical assistance after being beaten by several Israelis in Aqraba in the West Bank on October 6, 2026. (JOHN WESSELS/AFP)
Agence France-Presse’s (AFP) photographer Jaafar Ashtiyeh is carried by Palestinian first responders to seek medical assistance after being beaten by several Israelis in Aqraba in the West Bank on October 6, 2026. (JOHN WESSELS/AFP)

Several settler attacks were reported across the West Bank on Tuesday, including a shooting and the siege of a Palestinian home, but no arrests were made by Israeli authorities, who have been unable to clamp down on the daily phenomenon.

In fields belonging to the northern West Bank village of Aqraba, a settler opened fire on Palestinians trying to harvest their olives, according to Palestinian media.

Gunshots can be heard in footage from the scene, while Palestinians are seen fleeing the area in a vehicle.

According to the reports, several Palestinians were wounded by the gunfire, and several others were injured upon being beaten by settlers, though the exact number of casualties was not immediately clear.

One of those wounded was a Palestinian photographer.

The IDF did not immediately respond to the incident.

Palestinian farmers say they face an uptick in settler attacks during the annual olive harvest, which include beatings, theft and vandalism.

Settlers beseiging Palestinian home in southern West Bank

Elsewhere in the West Bank on Tuesday, a Palestinian family said settlers were laying siege to their home.

Yousef Shanaran, a resident of Wadi Rahim in the southern Hebron Hills, told The Times of Israel that dozens of settlers attacked his home near the village of Samu, before later erecting a tent to block the only road leading to his house.

Dozens of settlers were filmed yesterday throwing stones at the house, while Palestinian media reported that settlers also torched several vehicles nearby.

Shanaran said the settlers tried to set fire to the door of his home and break in, but were unsuccessful. He was inside the house with his wife and four of his younger children, aged 8 to 13.

According to Shanaran, an illegal settler outpost was established in recent months some 800 meters (half a mile) from his home and has been demolished and rebuilt several times. Shortly before Monday’s initial attack, however, an extension of the outpost was established closer to his house — a tent blocking the only road out of the property.

Shanaran said he is afraid to leave the house for fear of being attacked by settlers. Footage from Tuesday morning showed two settlers near the tent.

The tent was dismantled following Monday’s attack near Samu but had already been reestablished by Tuesday morning. An Israeli activist who is in contact with Shanaran told The Times of Israel that he contacted police this morning to report the tent.

The IDF and police did not respond to requests for comment.

A separate attack was also reported overnight Monday-Tuesday in the central West Bank village Burqa, where a home was torched.

Footage from the scene appears to show that the house was extensively damaged by the fire.

No injuries or arrests were reported following the arson attack.

Despite incidents of settler violence in the West Bank taking place regularly — often multiple times a day — arrests are highly rare and convictions are even less common.

During a Sunday cabinet meeting, Shin Bet chief David Zini warned that he may seek to reinstate administrative detention for Jewish extremists in the West Bank to tackle settler attacks on Palestinians, according to Hebrew media reports.

The recent spike in settler violence has forced Zini to confront the question of how aggressively the Shin Bet should deal with Jewish extremists.

In the wake of heightened violence in the West Bank earlier this year, Shin Bet field agents recommended that several of the settler extremists be placed in administrative detention. According to Channel 13, Zini declined to do so.

This was in line with the position of Defense Minister Israel Katz, who halted the use of administrative detention, which allows for a suspect to be held without charge, against Jewish suspects — while intensifying its use against Palestinians and Arab Israelis.

Israeli authorities try to clear pair of illegal outposts

Attacks have been tied to the rapid expansion of illegal settler outposts that have mushroomed across the West Bank since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.

They house some of the most extremist settlers involved in many of the attacks against Palestinians.

While they are technically built without all of the necessary permits, most of them receive varying levels of funding, equipment and even weapons from the government, which views them as a tool for expanding Israel’s control over the West Bank, while also limiting Palestinian access to the territory.

Over 200 illegal settlement outposts have been established in the West Bank during the four-year term of the outgoing government, many of which have reportedly been set up with the coordination of settlement municipal authorities, the IDF, and other state agencies.

A small percentage of outposts are set up without such coordination, and it is these outposts that are often the target of enforcement by the Civil Administration, an agency within the Defense Ministry controlled by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the architect of the government’s massive expansion of the settlement enterprise.

Settler activists reported Tuesday that Border Police forces and Civil Administration personnel were working to evacuate two illegal settlement outposts in the central and northern West Bank.

The activists alleged that security forces used “unprecedented violence” in the evacuations, including the use of pepper spray and threatening to use taser guns on the settlers and protesters present at the site.

Footage posted by the activists from the Netzah Shmuel illegal outpost showed police officers tussling with the settlers and trying to detain them.

The settlers said several residents and activists were injured.

According to the Honenu legal aid organization, five people were arrested by the security services during the evacuation of Ora Yisrael, some of whom are minors, including a 14-year-old.

Border Police officers tussle with settler activists as they try to evacuate the illegal settlement outpost of “Netzah Shmuel”, Oct. 6, 2026. (Courtesy Hilltop News WhatsApp Channel)

Israel demolishes East Jerusalem building, displacing dozens of Palestinians

While such enforcement against illegal settler construction is rare, demolitions of wildcat building by Palestinians and Arab Israelis in the West Bank and Israel proper have surged under the current hardline Israeli government.

Israeli bulldozers on Tuesday demolished a five-story residential building in East Jerusalem which was home to about 70 people, in a move the local Palestinian authority amounted to “forcible transfer.”

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who gleefully oversaw the demolition, said the building had been constructed without a permit.

“I love hearing this noise. We demolish what is illegal,” Ben Gvir said in a video posted on X, which showed him inside the cab of one of the bulldozers.

Densely populated East Jerusalem faces a severe housing crisis, with thousands of homes built without permits, which its Palestinian residents say are near impossible to obtain from Israeli authorities.

The Jerusalem Governorate, the Palestinian local authority for the area, condemned Tuesday’s demolition, which it said was “a dangerous escalation in the policy of home demolitions and forcible transfer… and the imposition of a new demographic and urban reality.”

Hanine Hreibat, a teacher and mother of four who was renting one of the 10 apartments in the building, said a large Israeli police force arrived in the At-Tur neighborhood in the early morning, accompanied by three bulldozers.

The officers stormed the apartments and gave residents 10 minutes to leave, she said.

Hreibat told AFP she had woken up to the sound of her husband shouting at the police, asking them not to enter the bedroom where she was, adding she had endured “five minutes of terror, with weapons pointed at our heads.”

She said police officers had allowed her to take only medicine, money, her handbag and ID card.

Among the rubble, residents collected gas cylinders and filled plastic bags with clothes they had managed to pull out from the huge mound of debris.

Hreibat said she had nowhere to go following the demolition.

“We’ll look for a second home. Today we’re at my in-laws’ and tomorrow at my parents,'” she said.

Residents confirmed to AFP that they had received a demolition notice on Monday, but did not know when it would be carried out.

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