An elderly Christian Palestinian woman was seriously wounded in an Israeli settler attack on her home in the occupied West Bank on Saturday.
Settlers brought their livestock to graze near the house on the outskirts of Birzeit, north of Ramallah, close to the Atara military barrier.
Resident Nafiz Emeid told Middle East Eye that the settlers deliberately damaged crops and trees before suddenly throwing stones at the house.
His mother, Najat Jadallah Emeid, 62, was struck in the head and hospitalised with serious injuries.
‘My mother was taken to the hospital and admitted to the intensive care unit, where it was discovered she had a fractured skull,’ Nafiz said.
Nafiz sustained hand injuries and bruises, while his brother Eid Emeid suffered a broken hand and finger.
According to Nafiz, when Eid saw his mother bleeding on the ground, he tried to drive the settlers away from the house.
They attacked him, throwing stones. He retaliated by throwing stones back and injured one of the settlers on the head.
The settlers immediately contacted the Israeli army, which arrested the family members.
Soldiers stormed the house and arrested Eid, Nafiz and their cousins Saeb and Basem while assaulting them. They later released only Nafiz.
‘We didn’t attack the settlers; we didn’t assault them. We defended ourselves, our home, and our land against their barbaric attack,’ Nafiz explained.
‘Not the first attack’
Nariman Koura, Najat’s daughter, said that her mother and siblings were sitting at home when they heard a dog barking outside.
She said her mother shouted at the settlers to leave after they began breaking olive branches and feeding them to the animals.
‘My brother told them to get out, but they ignored him and kept approaching us with the intention of harming us,’ Koura said.
‘There were two settlers. One hit my mother on the leg, causing her to fall.’
She said the second settler then picked up a large rock and struck her mother on the head at close range while she was on the ground, leaving her bleeding heavily.
When her brother tried to help their mother, a settler threw a rock at him, breaking his hand. He attempted to fend them off before taking his mother to the hospital.
‘While he was there, the Israeli army called and threatened him, saying something very bad would happen if he did not return home,’ Koura said.
‘He left my mother at the hospital and went back to Birzeit, where soldiers arrested him. The settlers and soldiers then left the area.’
‘This is not the first attack,’ she added. ‘Settlers regularly bring their sheep here to harass us and try to force us out.’
Koura said the family fears further attacks but remains determined to stay.
‘No matter what they do, we will not leave our land.’
After the incident, settlers began inciting violence online, demanding the demolition of the house and calling for attacks on Birzeit and Atara, while omitting any reference to the assault on her elderly mother.
Attacks on Christians
Wadie Abunassar, coordinator of the Holy Land Christian Forum, condemned the attack and the subsequent army arrest of the family members in a video statement.
‘I’m almost speechless about these repeated incidents,’ Abunassar said.
He added that a senior foreign observer told him: ‘Sometimes we feel powerless in the face of ongoing settler violence, especially due to the lack of cooperation from Israeli authorities.’
Abunassar urged action, saying: ‘I really beg everybody… enough is enough. This terrorism has to stop.’
Settler attacks on Christians in the West Bank have become increasingly frequent. The predominantly Christian town of Taybeh, east of Ramallah, has repeatedly seen homes and vehicles set on fire.
According to the Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs, there were 41 attacks on Christians in the first quarter of 2025, including verbal abuse, spitting, stone-throwing, and physical assaults. The second quarter saw 69 attacks, including the desecration of holy sites, vandalism, spitting and insults.
Settler attacks
Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Stop the Wall campaign, said Saturday’s events in Birzeit reflect the growing boldness of settlers and the escalating severity of their attacks.
He said the attacks are part of a systematic and well-planned strategy to force Palestinians out of their homes and lands under the weight of these assaults.
Between 23 December 2025 and 5 January 2026, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) documented 44 settler attacks in the West Bank, resulting in injuries and property damage and wounding 33 Palestinians, including children.
The violence also contributed to the displacement of roughly 100 Palestinian families, who fled under threats and intimidation.
‘We saw how they attacked Bedouin communities and carried out ethnic cleansing against them, but for them to carry out these attacks against a town like Birzeit and other towns like Turmusayya is something we don’t see often,’ Juma told MEE.
‘It proves that there is an ethnic cleansing plan targeting villages as well,’ he explained.
According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, the settler population in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, reached 770,420 by the end of 2024, spread across 180 settlements and 256 outposts, 138 of them agricultural or pastoral.
All settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law.