By Max Saltman and Mike Schwartz, CNN
(CNN) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday to “settle accounts” after gunmen killed three Israeli settlers and injured eight other people in a shooting attack on two cars and a bus in the occupied West Bank.
The vehicles were targeted on Route 55 in Al-Funduq, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, according to Israeli authorities. The road, which snakes through the northern West Bank, passes through the Jewish settlement of Kedumim.
Two women in one car were shot dead and a man in a second car 160 yards away died of gunshot wounds, Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service said, adding that all three were unconscious by the time emergency responders arrived.
A further eight people were injured in the attack, including the bus driver, who was shot in his limbs and abdomen, according to the MDA.
In a statement on X, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “find the abhorrent murderers and settle accounts with them and with all those who aided them. No one will get away.”
Netanyahu is expected to hold a cabinet meeting on the West Bank tomorrow.
While there has been no claim of responsibility yet for the shooting, it has been praised by the Palestinian militant group Hamas and been labelled a “terrorist attack” by Israel.
Speaking at the scene, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief Herzi Halevi vowed to to track down those responsible, make the route safer, and intensify Israel’s “intense and wide-ranging” operations “against terrorism” in the occupied West Bank.
The area has seen a surge of violence since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, atttack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war on Hamas in Gaza.
“For the terrorists who carried out this attack, the clock is ticking. We will find out who perpetrated this attack and reach them. We will act swiftly to bypass the town on this route and make the route safer,” Halevi said.
Israeli authorities later identified the two women as Aliza Reiss and Rachel Cohen – two civilian residents of Kedumim, both in their 70s – and the man as Yaakov Winkelstein, a police investigator from Ariel, a settlement south of the site of the attack.
Rephaela Segal, assistant mayor of Kedumim, described the women as “young in nature” and said Cohen had been volunteering as a special education teacher in her retirement. Reiss was a counselor at a high school in a nearby settlement, Karnei Shomron, and both were traveling to Karnei Shomron at the time of the attack, Segal said.
Volatile new chapter
Recent international focus on the region has focused largely on Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, launched after the militant group led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that killed around 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 45,000 people, according to Palestinian authorities.
But another major escalation of violence has been playing out around 60 miles away in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The West Bank, which lies between Israel and Jordan, is home to 3.3 million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation as well as hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis who began settling there some 57 years ago.
While tensions have been rising in the West Bank for years, the October 7 attacks ushered in a volatile new chapter in the occupied territory. Attacks on Palestinian communities by Israeli settlers, emboldened by their country’s offensive in Gaza and support from Israel’s right-wing government, have increased – while there have also been attacks against the settlers.
According to the UN, more than 500 Palestinian civilians were killed in the West Bank during 2024, with children bearing much of the violence. The UN said in December that 2024 had been a deadlier year for Palestinian children in the West Bank than the prior seven years combined. Since the October 7 attacks in 2023, at least 169 children have been killed by Israeli forces and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the UN.
Meanwhile, 2024 was the third-deadliest year for Israelis in the West Bank since data collection began in 2008, according to the UN, which recorded the deaths of 34 Israelis – 15 soldiers and 19 civilians. Of those civilians, seven were settlers.
In addition to violence involving settlers, Palestinian militants have also engaged in clashes with the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank and is accused by some groups of selling out to Israel.
This isn’t the first time in recent months that this part of the West Bank has experienced intercommunal violence. In August 2024, a group of 30 armed settlers attacked Jit, a Palestinian town just 10 minutes from Kedumim. They fired bullets, tear gas and set homes and cars on fire, according to residents who witnessed the attack.
CNN’s Eugenia Yosef contributed to this report.
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