The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the latest crime committed yesterday morning by Israeli armed settlers, who killed a Palestinian in the Abu Seifi Plain, northeast of Doma village in Nablus. This crime forms part of a systematic and ongoing wave of violence carried out by Israeli settlers under the protection of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and backed by the Israeli government and judiciary.
According to eyewitness testimonies and information collected by PCHR’s field staff, at approximately 10:30 on Wednesday, 13 August 2025, an Israeli armed settler driving an agricultural tractor approached from a pastoral settlement outpost illegally established two months ago in southeastern Nablus, specifically on al-Nahdah Street, north of Doma village. The settler kidnapped a child who was riding a bicycle on the same street. In response, villagers gathered to rescue the child. Afterwards, the villagers gathered to protest the settlers’ recent opening of a road—constructed a month earlier—to connect the outposts in the area. Altercations occurred with the settlers and one of the settlers opened fire on the protesters, injuring a man in the right thigh. Shortly afterwards, three Israeli soldiers arrived at the scene and fired live ammunition to disperse the crowd and facilitate the settler’s escape. The injured man, later identified as Thameen Khalil Reda Dawabshah (35), was evacuated by a civilian car to Doma Clinic and subsequently transferred by an ‘Aqraba ambulance to Rafidia Governmental Hospital. He arrived without vital signs, despite Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation attempts, and was pronounced dead by medical staff.
This crime is neither accidental nor isolated; it unfolds the ongoing surge in violence perpetrated by armed settler militias, armed and backed by senior Israeli government ministers. It is the fourth such attack in recent weeks, part of a series of grave crimes that have claimed the lives of six Palestinian civilians, bringing the death toll from settler attacks since the beginning of the year to nine. In addition, many other Palestinians have been killed by IOF’s gunfire while securing settlers’ assaults across the West Bank.
PCHR affirms these crimes reflect a systematic policy carried out under the protection of the IOF and the complicity of the Israeli judiciary, which consistently fails to issue deterrent rulings against settlers. These acts of violence are aimed at depopulating the area to facilitate illegal settlement expansion, which constitutes a war crime under international law.
These crimes prove that the Israeli occupation and its settler militias are implementing a dual regime of violence aimed at eradicating the Palestinian existence through all means, including killing, destruction, confiscation, forced displacement, and intimidation. Such a regime cannot be confronted without serious and decisive international intervention.
PCHR recalls the International Court of Justice’s ruling issued in July 2024, which affirmed that the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, including the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, is illegal. The ruling obligated Israel to immediately end its illegal presence and cease all settlement-related violations, including the evacuation of settlers from the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).
PCHR reaffirms that these crimes require immediate and effective action to halt the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation and settlers in the oPt, and to end the apartheid regime imposed by Israel on the Palestinian people.
PCHR calls for serious measures to hold perpetrators of war crimes accountable before international justice and to end the entrenched policy of impunity. It further urges an immediate halt to all forms of international support for Israel that enable it to persist in its racist and colonial policies.
