BAZZARYAH: The Israeli army demolished on Wednesday the home of a Palestinian accused of carrying out a stabbing and shooting attack that killed an Israeli earlier this year, the military said.

On July 10, two attackers killed 22-year-old Shalev Zvuluny in a shopping area near Jerusalem, before the Israeli army shot them dead.

On Wednesday, Israeli army bulldozers entered the village of Bazzaryah in the occupied West Bank, destroying the family home of one of the attackers after it had been evacuated.

Israeli forces “demolished the home of the terrorist who carried out the shooting and stabbing attack at the Gush junction, during which Shalev Zvuluny... was murdered”, the army said in a statement.

Hilltop settlers coordinate attacks to expel Palestinians

Hazem Yassine, head of the Bazzaryah municipal council, denounced what he called a “heinous crime”.

He said that Israeli forces had sealed off the village’s entrances since dawn in preparation for the demolition.

“Schools were closed as a precaution,” he said, adding that the assailant’s family had moved out around a month ago after being notified of the decision to demolish the house.

Israel, whose army has occupied the West Bank since 1967, regularly demolishes the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis.

The government defends the deterrent effect of these demolitions, but critics denounce the practice as a form of collective punishment that leaves families homeless.

Violence in the West Bank surged during the war in Gaza, which erupted on October 7, 2023, with Hamas’s attack on Israel.

Deir Dibwan

The Jewish settler outpost of Or Meir is small. A handful of prefabricated white shelters sits at the end of a short dirt track on a hill leading up from Road 60, a major route that dissects the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Over time, similar modest dwellings have turned into sprawling Israeli housing developments, part of a plan that members of Israel’s cabinet acknowledge they have implemented to prevent the birth of a Palestinian state.

The process can be violent. A Bedouin family said attackers who descended from Or Meir, hurling Molotov cocktails, drove them off Palestinian-owned land nearby last year. They fear they won’t ever be able to return.

Messages posted on Or Meir’s channel on the Telegram social media platform celebrate chasing out Bedouin herders and show the new settlers’ determination to secure lasting control over what they call strategic territory.

This year was one of the most violent on record for Israeli civilian attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, according to United Nations data that shows more than 750 injuries and the rapid spread of outposts throughout the land Palestinians hope will form the heart of a future state.

Israeli NGO Peace Now has recorded 80 outposts built in 2025, the most since the organization started its records in 1991. On December 21, Israel’s cabinet approved 19 more settlements, including former outposts. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the goal was to block Palestinian statehood.

Or Meir’s settlers

For decades, groups of settlers have built outposts on West Bank land without official authorisation from the Israeli state. Israeli authorities in the West Bank sometimes demolish such camps, but they often reappear, and in many cases end up being accepted by Israel as formal settlements. Smotrich has pushed efforts to formalise more outposts.

Most of the world considers all of Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank illegal under international law relating to military occupations. Israel disputes this view.

“Since establishing our presence on the land, we have driven away nine illegal Bedouin outposts, and returned 6,000 dunams to Jewish hands,” the account representing Or Meir’s settlers said in a post in September, using the dunam measurement equal to about 1,000 square meters, or a quarter of an acre.

Israeli monitoring group Yesh Din said of the hundreds of cases of settler violence it documented since October 7, 2023, only 2% resulted in indictments.

More than a thousand Palestinians were killed in the West Bank between October 7, 2023, and October 17, 2025, mostly in operations by security forces and some by settler violence, according to the UN. In the same period, 57 Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks.

The Or Meir group has been open about its goals.

Road 60 is flanked by settlements. It is intersected by Road 505, running west-east toward the Jordan Valley, and also lined with settlements, including Evyatar near the Palestinian town of Beita.

Evyatar began as a tented outpost in 2019. It was evacuated in 2021 but secured Israeli government recognition in 2024. Malkiel Barhai, Evyatars mayor, credited Smotrich for the approval.

Speaking in Evyatar with a pistol tucked into his trousers that he said was for protection, Barhai said the settlement was vital to keep Road 505 open because we have Arab villages, hostile Arab villages, around.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2025