‘Go inside, he will kill you’: Israeli militants step up West Bank school attacks. Education is being targeted across Palestine, with the murder of 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan only the latest in a spree of violence

Footage from inside the Mughayyir school shows terrified children and teachers crouched in stairwells.

Emma Graham-Harrison, Sufian Taha and Quique Kierszenbaum in Mughayyir

Sat 2 May 2026

The Israeli reservist shot 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan in the head just outside the western gate of the Mughayyir boys’ secondary school, where he was studying in ninth grade.

Aws collapsed instantly, bleeding heavily. More shots rang out as his friends ran to his side, picked up his now-limp body and rushed him out of the line of fire, their path along the school wall marked by a trail of their classmate’s blood.

Footage from inside the building showed terrified children and teachers crouched in stairwells, shouting at others to get down. Another video captured the shooter, a reservist in partial military uniform, taking aim at the school from the hillside above.

A few minutes later the same man killed the younger brother of an English teacher Waheed Abu Naim, whose family live beside the school. Jihad Abu Naim was 36; his wife is heavily pregnant with the couple’s first child, a girl due this month.

Aws and Abu Naim were shot dead on 21 April amid a wave of settler violence in the occupied West Bank, much of which has targeted schools and students in the territory.

Mughayyir, a village of about 3,000 people nestled in the rolling hills north-east of Ramallah, has been targeted for many years. Aws’s father, Hamdi al-Naasan, was killed in January 2019, shot in the back by a settler as he tried to rescue an injured neighbour.

Aws was only in third grade at the time, and his teachers devoted extra attention to the young boy in the years that followed. “We tried to make Aws feel safe, and ensure he had some rules in his life, to protect him from the impact of losing his father,” said Waheed Abu Naim. “Then we lost him.”

After the killings, classes in Mughayyir were suspended for a week as parents and teachers weighed up hopes for their children’s futures against immediate fears for their lives. “We want to go back to school, but our families are worried,” said Ahmed Abu Ali, a friend and classmate of the murdered teenager.

Education is under attack across occupied Palestine. The situation is most severe in Gaza, where more than 600,000 school-age children are approaching the end of a third year without formal in-person education. Israeli attacks there have killed at least 792 teachers and 18,639 students, according to the UN, and damaged or destroyed nine out of 10 school buildings.

But students and schools are also targets of spiralling Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank, where there is a climate of near total impunity for attacks on Palestinians.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/02/israeli-militants-attack-west-bank-schools-settler-violence

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"The goal is to expel these people,” Taor said, referring to the local Palestinians... In the Jordan valley [PALESTINE], teenage [ISRAELI] settlers [FUNDED BY ISRAEL] drive herds of goats into a [INDIGENOUS] Palestinian community in a bid to force [NATIVE BUT NOT JEWISH] families out

Herds of goats are sent to the Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja while volunteers form a ‘protective presence’.

 Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

The volunteers putting their bodies between Israel settlers and a Palestinian village

In the Jordan valley, teenage settlers drive herds of goats into a Palestinian community in a bid to force families out – volunteers are trying to hold the line

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/20/the-volunteers-putting-their-bodies-between-israel-settlers-and-a-palestinian-village

Julian Borger and Quique Kierszenbaum in Ras Ein al-Auja, West Bank

Sat 20 Dec 2025

It is a daily onslaught. Every morning, teenage Israeli settlers drive a herd of goats from their outpost in the hills down into the valley towards the Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja.

The local men, women and children retreat inside their huts and tents. Any hint of resistance from a Palestinian is likely to bring in the Israeli army or the border police, confiscation of property and disappearance into the maw of “administrative” detention without trial, for months or years.

Instead, a small group of volunteers step forward each morning to face the descending settlers whose stated aim is to overrun and trample the village with their livestock, and drive Palestinians out.

On this particular Saturday, the defenders of Ras Ein al-Auja are four Israeli Jews, a Hungarian and an American, who make a screen around Palestinian homes to shoo away the encroaching animals.

“The settlers are trying to provoke the local people into protecting themselves, but if they do the army and police will storm the community and arrest everyone,” said one of the Israeli volunteers, Amir Pansky, a retired Israeli army major.

“We are a protective presence because we are putting our bodies between the Jewish settlers and the Palestinians.”

For every defensive move they make, the teenage settler goatherds respond with an offensive counter-move to outflank the village guardians. The boys walk right up to the volunteers until their faces are inches apart, and the latter try to stand their ground, waving their arms and shouting.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/20/the-volunteers-putting-their-bodies-between-israel-settlers-and-a-palestinian-village

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