The suffocation of Sinjil – encaged West Bank town
The fence bisecting the West Bank village of Sinjil, north of Ramallah, 25 June 2025.
Shatha Yaish reports in +972 on 14 July 2025:
On July 11, around 30 Israeli settlers descended in broad daylight on farmland near the Palestinian town of Sinjil, close to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. According to eyewitnesses, residents from Sinjil and nearby Al-Mazra’a A-Sharqiyyeh came out to confront them, but the settlers — some of whom were armed — were not deterred.
They began attacking the residents, beating 20-year-old Sayfollah Musallet, a Palestinian-American known to his friends as Saif, to within an inch of his life. For three hours, the Israeli army blocked paramedics from reaching Musallet, who was later pronounced dead. Another young man, 23-year-old Mohammad Razek Hussein Al-Shalabi, was also shot dead by settlers; his body was later found in a nearby olive grove.
The attack occurred in the Jabal Al-Batin area, located in Area A of the West Bank which is under nominal Palestinian Authority (PA) control. Israeli settlers established an outpost nearby in April, rebuilding it several times after the Israeli authorities dismantled it and routinely harassing local farmers with little to no resistance from the army.
Khaled Fuqaha stands near the fence bisecting his village of Sinjil in the West Bank, 25 June 2025
A friend of Musallet’s, who asked to remain anonymous, was with him at the time of Friday’s attack. He described how three settler youths armed with clubs approached them on a hillside, followed by a pickup truck carrying more settlers — two of them masked, wearing military-style pants, and armed with M16 rifles — who were later seen pelting a Palestinian ambulance with stones, smashing its windshield.
According to Musallet’s friend, the settlers were soon joined by a bigger group and began throwing stones at the Palestinians, one of which struck Musallet in the back, causing him to fall to the ground. Moments later, a settler opened fire with his rifle, causing the rest of the Palestinians, including Musallet’s friend, to scatter.
The friend didn’t see what happened to Musallet after that, but explained that the Israeli army was nowhere to be seen. “They let the settlers attack and only came after,” he said. Musallet had arrived in Palestine just weeks earlier to spend the summer with relatives. “He was beaten to death on our family’s land by settlers trying to take it,” said his cousin, Diana. “We demand the U.S. investigate, but we’ve seen what happens to other Palestinian-Americans killed here: nothing.”