‘Israeli settlers are in partnership with the army,’ say Palestinians after two shot dead in West Bank

The bodies of Awda Abulrahim Farahneh and Ahmed Adil Abu Muhu, killed in Israeli raids at the village of Deir Jarir, are taken to a burial ground on Monday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty View image in fullscreen The bodies of Awda Abulrahim Farahneh and Ahmed Adil Abu Muhu, killed in Israeli raids at the village of Deir Jarir, are taken to a burial ground on Monday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ‘Israeli settlers are in partnership with the army,’ say Palestinians after two shot dead in West Bank Residents of Deir Jarir say series of raids late on Sunday, also involving security forces, is part of a pattern of violence Even by the brutal standards of militant settler violence in the West Bank , the raid on Deir Jarir late on Sunday night that killed two Palestinians and left another in hospital with a gunshot wound was extreme. Palestinians in the town said settlers from a nearby outpost arrived after 9pm on Sunday claiming that they were searching for stolen livestock. Israeli soldiers and police soon joined them, protecting them as they sought to take several villagers’ sheep by force. But when villagers raised the alarm and a crowd gathered, soldiers shot two men, beginning a night of three successive raids by settlers from nearby outposts and Israeli soldiers that lasted until after 2am, according to Palestinian residents of Deir Jarir. Saber Ajaj, a relative of one of the victims, 53-year-old Odeh Farajna, said he found him moments after he had been shot through the chest. Farajna, a member of the village council, owned a flower shop and helped with the stonework at the local graveyard. “The moment I put him in the car I knew that he was dead,” Ajaj said in an interview during a reception held after the funeral. “This shooting was meant to kill.” In interviews as they buried the two victims on Monday, family and friends of the dead Palestinian men described several attacks each month where they said settlers, backed by security forces, arrived in houses on the outskirts of the village and then stole livestock. “It’s a partnership between the army and the settlers,” said Adel Rashid, the father of the younger victim, Abdul Adel Rashid Abu Mukh, 26. Rashid said local settlers on Sunday had stolen 21 of his sheep, while 50 more had been taken from another member of the village. Video of Sunday’s incident showed a settler protected by four IDF soldiers in green camouflage leading a sheep out of a local house. The raids are part of a picture of worsening settler violence in the region as Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right allies have accelerated a land grab in the occupied West Bank. View image in fullscreen The funeral of Awda Abulrahim Farahneh and Ahmed Adil Abu Muhu on Monday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Arbitrary checkpoints and other restrictions to cut off towns like Deir Jarir after the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas have been bolstered by plans for the government to endorse new settlements in the West Bank before national elections that could challen