In the predawn hours of Feb. 5, an Israeli settler working as a guard at the Sadeh Ephraim Farm outpost near Ramallah shot dead Khaled Maher Nofal, 34, on the hilltop of Mount al-Risan, just outside the Palestinian village of Ras Karkar. According to Israeli accounts, Khaled, a resident of Ras Karkar, had stormed the outpost and attacked one of the settlers before he was shot.

In the past weeks, the streets, villages and towns of the West Bank have turned into arenas of real terror and fear, with daily assaults by settlers against Palestinians, whether in their vehicles, on the streets or in their homes.

On Jan. 17, Mashhour al-Qut, a Palestinian from Madama village south of Nablus in the northern West Bank, received a painful phone call from his wife while at work. “Hala is dead. She is gone now,” she cried.

The phone call broke him. He could not believe what he heard. “How?” he asked. “By the settlers,” she replied. But that was before she learned that her daughter Hala, 10, was not dead but had fallen into a coma after getting hit in the face with a stone.