The Empty Desks at al-Mughayyir School

Three Desks That Stay Empty

At al-Mughayyir boys school in the occupied West Bank, three desks sit unused on the first day of the academic year. The children who should occupy them were shot dead this spring — one of them, fourteen-year-old Aws al-Naasan, killed by a settler’s bullet outside the school gates in April.

The headteacher, Bassam al-Assaf, arrived before dawn to walk past the freshly installed barbed-wire fencing and reinforced school gates. Ambulance crews now wait on the road outside. Parents volunteer to stand at the entrance all day. Teachers drill students on what not to do when soldiers or settlers appear: don’t shout, don’t approach, don’t react.

This is not routine security preparation. It is the militarization of an education space — a village school transformed into a fortress because the surrounding countryside has become a shooting zone.

Who Is Protecting Whom

The most consequential detail in this story sits barely beneath the surface. Hadi al-Naasan, an ambulance driver in al-Mughayyir, told me something that changes how you read the entire situation: at the beginning of 2025, settler attacks were few because the army intervened. By 2026, he said, “the settlers became fully protected by the occupation soldiers.”

English teacher Waheed Abu Naem watched this unfold firsthand. In April, he was inside his classroom when two students ran in to warn him that settlers were close to the school wall. He moved toward the gate to pull the children inside. A reservist soldier fired. Aws al-Naasan died. Bullets continued hitting the school building as students hid behind classroom walls or lay on the floor.

The Israeli military said stones had been hurled at a car carrying civilians including a reservist. Israeli media reported the soldier was suspended and an investigation launched. Neither outcome has filled the three empty desks.

The regional settlers council confirmed an off-duty soldier was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the shooting of Sami Abu Rahma’s nine-year-old son, Salim, who was shot while playing on the family sheep farm in July. But the arrest came after the bullet was already lodged in the boy’s arm.

The Strategy Behind the Shots

A UN Commission of Inquiry published in June concluded that settler attacks have “instrumentalized children as part of a broader coercive strategy to drive Palestinians off their land.” The report described a pattern of settlers intentionally targeting Palestinian children while they played near homes, walked to school, tended farms, or herded livestock — turning everyday spaces into sites of fear.

Israel dismissed the report as a “libellous sham.” But the numbers tell a different story. UN figures show Palestinians injured during settler attacks rising to an average of three per day this year. Since the beginning of 2025, the UN has recorded 316 Palestinians killed and more than 5,600 injured by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank through July 2026. Twenty Israelis were killed in the same period.

Sami Abu Rahma is the last sheep farmer left in his area. The others were chased away. The settler who shot his son lived in an illegal outpost that appeared next to the farm in June — and had previously shot at Salim in the same area a week before. “You no longer feel you can keep them safe in the street, or even at school,” Sami said. “What do you do when settlers start shooting your kids?”

The Silence Abroad

Here is what English-language coverage of this crisis almost never asks: why does the world react differently to school violence depending on who is doing the shooting?

When children are killed in mass shootings in the United States, the response is immediate and global. When schools are bombed in Ukraine, the outrage is sustained. When Palestinian children are shot at West Bank schools by settlers operating with what witnesses describe as military protection, the reaction is notably muted — a press release here, a statement there, and then silence.

The UK is expected to announce sanctions this week in response to Israeli settlement policies. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has attributed settler violence to a tiny extremist minority, calling them “150 juvenile delinquents.” The Finance Ministry pushed forward plans this week to take over land registration in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — described by the Israeli settlement monitor Peace Now as “a clear step towards annexation.” Israeli elections are less than two months away.

Netanyahu’s government faces growing international pressure. But pressure has not stopped the attacks. Arrests have not reassured the families. Plans to dismantle illegal outposts have not held — demolished outposts are quickly rebuilt.

What Happens Next

Al-Mughayyir is not an anomaly. It is a pattern unfolding across the occupied West Bank: more illegal settler outposts encircling Palestinian villages, more protection for settlers from Israeli forces, and attacks moving from farms and grazing land into built-up areas where women and children are more at risk.

The children at al-Mughayyir school now hear the same instructions repeated throughout the day. They learn early that safety requires shrinking yourself — not running, not shouting, not reacting. Adults understand the gravity better, which is perhaps why they are the ones who stand guard at the gates.

Haroon Bishara, whose boys are in first and second grade, said he came to the school every day because it makes the children feel their parents are with them. “We fear for our children more this year,” he said. “But we will not let the threat force us out.”

The three empty desks suggest that fear may yet win. The question for the international community is whether it will continue to look away while a generation of Palestinian children learns that school is somewhere you survive — not somewhere you belong.