At dawn on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, the occupation forces surrounded a house on the western side of the town of Aqrabah, south of Nablus, and bombed it with Energa bombs. A military bulldozer demolished parts of it. The young man, Abdul Karim Muhammad Khader Suleiman, 28 years old, was martyred inside it, and then the occupation army seized his body.
With this martyr, the first hundred martyrs of the West Bank in 2026 were completed, 251 days after the martyrdom of Khattab Daraghmeh in Al-Lubban Al-Sharqiya on the first day of the year.
One hundred martyrs in 251 days is a lower number than what the West Bank has become accustomed to since the start of the war of extermination; last year we reached one hundred on March 11, and in 2024 on March 2. But when the figures are read in detail in the Shirin Observatory's database, they do not tell of calm, but rather of a shift in the tools of killing, its locations, and its victims.
Year of settler crimes
The most notable finding in the martyrs of 2026 is that 32 percent were killed in attacks in which settlers participated. This is the highest absolute number recorded by the Observatory's database for settler victims in a single year, even though the year has not yet ended.
The most alarming aspect is the percentage: settler violence accounted for 32% of the West Bank martyrs this year, compared to 7.4% in 2025, 2.1% in 2024, and 5.5% in 2023. In all the years since 2000 when the number of martyrs exceeded fifty, this percentage never exceeded 12.1%. This means that the settler, whose role in the killings was previously marginal compared to the occupation army, has this year become complicit in a third of the bloodshed.
| Year | Martyrs of the West Bank | With the participation of settlers | ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 527 | 29 | 5.5% |
| 2024 | 518 | 11 | 2.1% |
| 2025 | 269 | 20 | 7.4% |
| 2026 (until September 8) | 100 | 32 | 32% |
The settler, whose role in the killing was marginal compared to the occupation army, has this year become complicit in a third of the bloodshed.
Geography has been turned upside down
In the past three years, the center of gravity has been in the north: Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus topped the list of governorates in 2023, 2024 and 2025, with raids and assassinations concentrated in the camps and neighborhoods of Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus.
But in 2026 the map was turned upside down. Ramallah and Al-Bireh topped the list with 23 martyrs, for the first time since the start of the war of extermination, followed by Nablus with 21 and Hebron with 20, making it clear that the matter was no longer related only to the military operations of the occupation, but also to the participation of settlers in terrorizing Palestinians in the villages adjacent to the settlement outposts in the central West Bank.
A quarter of the martyrs are children
25 of the 100 martyrs of the year were children under the age of 18, a quarter of the martyrs, the highest percentage recorded in the West Bank since 2017. Among them this year were two infants. The first was Sam Fahd Abu Haikal , (7 months old), who was shot by the occupation forces on a vehicle he was riding in with his parents in Tel Rumeida, south of Hebron. All three were injured, and the infant died of his wounds on June 5.
The second was Ahmed Marouf Zeid , (4 months) from Deir Ammar, west of Ramallah. He was born after years of waiting and was on his way to receive treatment on July 5 when the occupation forces prevented his family from crossing the checkpoint at the entrance to the village for more than an hour, amidst the firing of gas bombs at the residents and vehicles. He was declared dead at the Arab Consulting Hospital.
A whole family in a car
On March 15, during an Israeli raid on the town of Tammun in Tubas, soldiers opened fire on a car carrying the Bani Odeh family. The father, Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, 37, his wife, Waad Othman Bani Odeh, 35, and their two children, Othman, 6, and Muhammad, 5, were killed. Two other children from the family survived. Four martyrs from one family in a single moment, on one of the bloodiest days of the year.
Black March
The martyrs were distributed unevenly across the months of the year. In March alone, 29 martyrs fell, representing 29% of the year's total martyrs in a single month, averaging nearly one martyr per day. This month saw the massacre of the Bani Odeh family, the martyrs at the Za'tara checkpoint, and nine victims of settler attacks. July followed with 15 martyrs, nine of whom were killed in settler attacks on Tel, Deir Jarir, Beit Furik, and Al-Mughayyir.
Barriers and wall
Nine Palestinians were killed at checkpoints, intersections, and the separation wall: the Tunnels checkpoint south of Bethlehem, the Za'tara checkpoint twice in one day, the Anab checkpoint east of Tulkarm, the Kharsa junction in Hebron, the Gush Etzion junction, the Shu'fat refugee camp checkpoint, and the wall in al-Ram and Bir Nabala. The bodies of seven of these nine were withheld by the Israeli occupation forces, and most were recorded under the pretext of "allegedly attempting to carry out an attack," a claim for which the occupation provides no evidence and allows no verification.
Corpses that do not return
The occupation forces have withheld the bodies of 30 martyrs from the year 100, releasing only two to date. Twenty-eight families in the West Bank are still waiting for a body to bury, including the family of the 100th martyr in Aqrabah.
Holding bodies is no longer an exception but a widespread policy in the West Bank. The occupation held 97 bodies in 2023, 153 in 2024, and 123 in 2025.
One hundred names in 251 days. It is not just the number that should be read, but what it says about the year: that the settler has become a killer by number, not by exception, that villages have replaced camps in the targeting records, and that a quarter of those who pay the price in blood are children, including an infant who was not allowed to cross to a hospital.
Source: Shirin Observatory Database, West Bank Martyrs Declared up to September 8, 2026.