One village, one week in the war for the West Bank

What began with an attack by settlers led to the death of a teenager and ended with a brutal IDF siege. As the UK prepares to recognise Palestinian statehood, Isabel Coles' report from al-Mughayyir shows why it may never be attained

- Isabel Coles

Dusk was falling as Israeli military vehicles drove into al-Mughayyir, a village of about 3,000 residents perched above olive groves in the occupied West Bank last month.

Hours earlier, young men from the village, which is northeast of Ramallah, had clashed with Israeli settlers who have been encroaching on their village in a campaign of violent intimidation that has made life untenable for many Palestinians here.

After coming home from work, 18-year-old Hamdan Moussa Abu Alia got changed, ate dinner and told his mother he was going out. "I told him not to," she recalled. "I told him the army and settlers are there."

Her youngest son did not listen.

Escalating attacks by settlers had driven him to despair, she said. They had torched the family home and shot his elder brother in the leg during a rampage through the village last year. Before going out, Abu Alia mentioned he was going to look at a fire lit by the settlers, his mother said. As a volunteer in the local civil defence forces, he was involved in responding to settler attacks.

Within 10 minutes, he was dead.

The Israeli military said it had opened fire after “terrorists” threw rocks and molotov cocktails at troops. “A hit has been identified,” it said in a statement. A grainy video filmed from a window captured Abu Alia making a dash between two buildings before toppling over.

What unfolded in the village over the following week would reveal the battle lines between settlers and Palestinians over control of the West Bank. Abu Alia's death began a spiral of violence that culminated in a full-blown siege of al-Mughayyir, raising questions about the legality of Israeli military actions, and revealing the overlapping agendas of radical settlers and the state.