Fears for children's safety in West Bank school as settler attacks rise

Palestinian parents in the West Bank village of al‑Mughayyir say they fear for their children’s safety after the local schoolhouse was surrounded with barbed‑wire fencing amid a rise in settler attacks. The village, located northeast of Ramallah, has experienced a steady expansion of Jewish settler outposts and frequent ad‑hoc checkpoints imposed by Israeli forces at its entrance. This year alone, six residents — three of them pupils at the schoolhouse — have been killed in what activists describe as a surge of settler‑related violence. Among the victims was 14‑year‑old Aws al‑Naasan, who was shot dead by a settler outside the schoolhouse gates in April. Under international law, every Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank is deemed illegal, and many of the informal outposts that have sprouted around al‑Mughayyir also violate Israeli domestic statutes.