Three Israelis were killed and eight others injured in a shooting attack near the illegal West Bank settlement of Kedumim, Israeli authorities have said.
Israeli media outlets cited security officials as saying at least two Palestinian gunmen opened fire at cars and a bus outside the settlement before fleeing the scene on Monday.
The shooting killed two women in their 70s as well as a 35-year-old police investigator from the illegal settlement of Ariel.
The incident comes as the war rages on in Gaza amid efforts to reach a truce deal.
After the shooting, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich appeared to call for all-out violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, akin to the devastation Israel has unleashed on Gaza.
“Al-Funduk, Nablus and Jenin need to look like Jabalia,” he said, referring to the northern Gaza area that Israel has levelled and deprived of humanitarian aid for weeks.
Israel has faced accusations of ethnic cleansing in Jabalia. United Nations experts and several rights groups have also said that Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
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“The terrorism in [the West Bank] and the terrorism from Gaza and Iran is the same terrorism – and it must be defeated,” Smotrich added on Monday, according to the Times of Israel.
Since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023, Israel has intensified its crackdown on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, killing hundreds of people. The past year has also seen an uptick in settler attacks.
Palestinian gunmen – some associated with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – have also carried out attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied territory in recent months.
Abu Obeida, the spokesperson of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, hailed Monday’s shooting, saying that efforts by Israel and its agents to stop the “heroes of the West Bank” from backing Gaza are “destined to fail”.
“The enemy must know that it will never enjoy security until our people have security,” Abu Obeida said in a statement.
Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said that a manhunt for the suspects in Monday’s attack is under way across the occupied West Bank.
Reporting from Amman, Jordan because the Palestinian Authority has suspended Al Jazeera’s operations in the occupied West Bank, Salhut said Israeli authorities have closed several roads and blocked off many areas in their search.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israeli forces will capture the attackers.
“We will reach the despicable murderers and bring them to justice and everyone who helped them,” he wrote in a post on X. “No one will be spared.”
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The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in an advisory opinion in July that Israel’s presence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible”.
Alon Liel, the former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said that amid the escalating violence in the region, many Israelis are accepting that there is “no alternative” to fighting, particularly among younger people.
“It’s a very dangerous attitude that is developing here,” Liel told Al Jazeera on Monday.
“We need a very fundamental change in the thinking of Israel and maybe a fundamental change in the attitude of the international community [towards] the conflict, too.”
