On the first day of the new school year, the head‑teacher of a boys school in al‑Mughayyir walked past newly fenced perimeter rails and reinforced gates just before dawn. The olive trees around the village crept up into the sky, but the sight of barbed wire left the community in deeper fear.
Bassam al‑Assaf, a principal, told reporters that both students and parents now live in constant fear of a settler attack. In the past year, six people, including three pupils, have been killed in the village, the most recent of which was a 14‑year‑old boy shot outside the school gates on the fourth of April.
English teacher Waheed Abu Naem recalled hearing pupils dash to safety while the settler fired. The unfortunate footage captured the bullet lodging in the child’s skull; the young victim fell where he had been standing, liquid blood dripping from his head.
In response, the school installed a long barbed‑wire fence and doubled the number of reinforced gates. Ambulance crews have now been positioned beyond the perimeter, and several parents volunteer to stand outside the school all day to provide an extra layer of protection.
The scene that unfolded on the football field after classes had begun illustrates the daily insecurity felt by the children: their teachers repeatedly reminded them to keep quiet if soldiers or settlers approached or if they saw any approaching. For weeks, settlers drove sheep through the village, bringing with them a physical presence exactly two hundred metres from the school.
The increasing showdown between Israeli soldiers and settlers has prompted a UN Commission of Inquiry that condemned the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children. The Commission’s report concluded that children were “instrumentalised as a coercive strategy to push families to abandon land.” Israeli officials deny the allegations, describing them as a “libellous sham.”
Sami Abu Rahma, a local sheep farmer, said that the legal outpost that appeared near his farm last June had already shot his son Salim before the incident at the school. The shooting took place in front of their family home, revealing the extent to which settlers now target vulnerable villagers and children.
United Nations data shows a sharp rise in injuries this year, averaging three injured Palestinians per day during settler attacks, a trend that mirrors the rapid growth of illegal settlements in the region. The vetting of these outposts continues unchanged, even though full‑scale plans to dismantle many of them have been announced by Israel’s prime minister.
With Israeli elections less than two months away, the claim that settler violence is isolated and limited to a handful of extremists seems increasingly out of step with the on‑ground reality. As the West Bank expands its settlement frontier, the safety of its children continues to waver, especially in villages dragged “by the encirclement of illegal outposts.”
