Israeli settlers killed a 19-year-old Palestinian American, officials and witnesses said

MUKHAMS, West Bank (AP) — Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank shot and killed a Palestinian American man during an attack on the village, the Palestinian Health Ministry and a witness said Thursday.

Raid Abu Ali, a resident of Mukhmas, said a group of settlers came to the village on Wednesday afternoon where they attacked a farmer and clashes erupted after locals intervened. Israeli forces arrived later and armed settlers killed 19-year-old Nasrallah Abu Siam and wounded several others during the violence.

Abu Ali said the army fired tear gas, sound grenades and live fire. Israel’s 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 got excited and started firing live,” Abu Ali said. He said that those who were injured fell on the ground and were beaten with sticks.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed the death of Abu Siam from serious injuries on Wednesday afternoon near the eastern village of Ramallah.

Abu Siam’s killing is the latest incident 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 them soldiers. The Palestinian Authority’s Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission said Abu Siam was the first Palestinian killed by settlers in 2026.

Mukhmas and its surrounding areas – most of which are under Israeli civilian and military administration – have become a hot spot for settlement attacks, arson and attacks, as well as the construction of outposts, which Israeli law considers illegal.

The Israeli military said late Wednesday that unknown suspects shot the Palestinians, who were later taken out for medical treatment. It has not been revealed that anyone has been arrested.

Abu Siam’s mother told The Associated Press that he was an American citizen, making him the second Palestinian-American to be killed by Israeli settlers in less than a year.

A US embassy spokesman said they “condemn this violence.”

Palestinians and rights groups say authorities routinely fail to prosecute settlers or hold them accountable for violence.

The United Nations says Israel’s actions in the West Bank could amount to ethnic cleansing

The United Nations human rights office on Thursday accused Israel of war crimes and that its practices of displacing Palestinians and altering the demographic composition of the occupied West Bank “raise concerns of ethnic cleansing.”

Citing findings collected by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights from November 2024 to October 2025, it said Israel was engaged in “efforts to reinforce isolation” while maintaining a system of “repression and domination of the Palestinians”.

Residents of Palestinian villages and pastoral communities have increasingly been displaced by the expansion of Israeli settlements and outposts. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem says about 45 Palestinian communities have been completely emptied amid Israeli demolition orders and settler attacks.

Additionally, the office said Israeli military operations in the northern West Bank “used means and methods designed for war,” including deadly airstrikes and the forced transfer of civilians from their homes. It also said Israel “forbids” residents in northern West Bank refugee camps from returning to their homes. The campaign, which Israel says is aimed against militants, has 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 “threatened, detained and mistreated journalists, human rights defenders and other individuals critical of its regime”.

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 watchdog warned of “an open genocide in Gaza” as “living conditions are increasingly incompatible with (Palestinians’) continued existence.” Their report on Thursday also warned that demographic changes in Gaza have raised fears of ethnic cleansing.

The report found that Palestinian journalists in jail were tortured

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that dozens of Palestinian journalists detained in Israel during the Gaza war experienced physical assaults, coercive stress conditions, insensitivity, sexual violence and medical neglect.

CPJ has documented the detention of at least 94 Palestinian journalists and one media worker from the West Bank, Gaza and Israel during the war, CPJ said.

Half of the journalists, the report found, had never been charged with a crime and were held under Israel’s administrative detention system, which allows suspects deemed a security risk to be detained for up to six months and renewable indefinitely.

Israel’s prison services did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the report, but dismissed a similar report in January about the conditions of Palestinian prisoners as “false allegations”, saying it operates legally, is subject to inspections and reviews complaints.

The UN development chief says it will take 7 years to clear the rubble of Gaza

According to the United Nations Development Programme, it will take at least seven years to clear the rubble of the massive destruction across Gaza.

Former Belgian Prime Minister Alexandre de Croix, who recently returned from Gaza, said the UNDP had only cleared 0.5% of the rubble and that the people of Gaza were experiencing “the worst living conditions I have ever seen”.

De Crowe said 90% of Gaza’s 2.2 million people live in “very, very rudimentary tents” amid the rubble, posing health hazards and threats from explosive weapons.

UNDP has managed to build 500 improved houses, he said, and 4,000 more are ready, but the real need is estimated at 200,000 to 300,000 units. The units are meant to be used temporarily while they are being rebuilt. He called on Israel to expand access to goods and supplies needed for reconstruction and for the private sector to begin development.

___ Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Edith Lederer at the United Nations, Sam Metz in Jerusalem and Natalie Meltzer in Nahariya, Israel contributed to this report.

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