Resident of West Bank outpost, 18, killed after Palestinian vehicle strikes his ATV

Incident occurred as Yehudah Sherman and his brother were conducting ‘land patrol’ near settlement outpost; IDF, police investigating whether crash was a terror attack

An 18-year-old Israeli settler was killed in an incident in the West Bank on Saturday, after the ATV he was traveling in was hit by a Palestinian vehicle, the Israel Police said.

Following the incident, security forces were dispatched to Beit Imrin, near Nablus, the alleged origin of the Palestinian vehicle. Officials said they were investigating whether the incident was an accident or a terror attack.

Yehudah Sherman, aged 18, who lived in the illegal settlement outpost of Shuva Yisrael Farms in the northern West Bank, was conducting a “land patrol” with two other men on Saturday afternoon, including Sherman’s brother, Daniel, who lives in and runs the wildcat outpost, the Samaria District Council said.

The council’s statement alleged that the Palestinian vehicle sped up toward the ATV before hitting it, although neither the police nor the army statement included such details.

Sherman was fatally wounded, while his brother Daniel was lightly injured.

Police said that officers from the Samaria region, together with traffic accident investigators and forensic investigators from the Judea and Samaria District, arrived at the scene to search for evidence, while police detectives took witness statements from Daniel.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settlements advocate, described the incident as “murder” and expressed his condolences to Sherman’s parents, who are activists within Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party.

“Condolences from the bottom of my heart for my friends and partners of many years, Yehoshua and Sima Sherman and their family, over the murder of their son, Yehudah Shmuel Sherman, who fell guarding our country while holding on to the land of Samaria,” said Smotrich.

Notices on WhatsApp channels run by settler activists stated that they were preparing to stage protests at several locations around the West Bank in response to Sherman’s death, which, like Smotrich, they described as a murder.

“A Jew has been killed, all of us are coming out of our homes,” one message said.

“There will not be security as long as the enemy is still here,” it read, referring to Palestinians. “We demand the Oslo Accords be annulled and that the enemy be expelled.”

The post included a picture of one such protest, in which settler activists were gathered outside of the Palestinian village of Mukhmas, in the central West Bank, which has been the target of multiple violent settler attacks in recent weeks.

The West Bank has recently seen a wave of rising extremist settler violence against Palestinians. Six Palestinian civilians have been shot dead by settlers since the beginning of March, while other violent attacks by such radical elements against Palestinians and civil rights activists seeking to protect them have become a daily occurrence in the West Bank.

More broadly, violence in the West Bank has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since the war started, according to the PA health ministry. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops, or terrorists carrying out attacks.

During the same period, 65 civilians and Israeli security personnel have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another eight members of the security forces were killed in clashes during raids in Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

The same period has also seen a major surge in attacks by settler extremists on Palestinians and their property across the West Bank. The IDF recorded 867 incidents of nationalistic crime and settler violence in 2025. The total for 2024 was 682 incidents.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.