An Israeli woman on her way to give birth was killed in a West Bank attack

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Tzeela Gez was on her way to the hospital to bring new life into this world when hers was suddenly cut short.

As her husband drove their car through the winding roads of the occupied West Bank late Wednesday, a Palestinian attacker shot at them. Within hours, Gez, nine months pregnant, was dead. Doctors barely saved the life of the baby, who is in serious but stable condition.

Israel says it is trying to prevent such attacks by waging a monthslong crackdown on West Bank militants that intensified earlier this year. But the escalating offensive, which has killed hundreds of Palestinians over 19 months, displaced tens of thousands and caused widespread destruction, has ultimately not snuffed out attacks.

And the latest bloodshed is only likely to fuel a cycle of violence that has persisted for decades between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel has pledged to find the attacker, who fled the scene, and the military chief of staff, who visited the area Thursday, told troops that the broader operation would continue alongside the manhunt.

“We will use all the tools at our disposal and reach the murderers in order to hold them accountable,” Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said, according to a statement from the military, which said it had sealed Palestinian villages in the area of the attack and set up checkpoints.

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The shooting, especially because the victim was a pregnant mother with three other children, has the potential to ignite vigilante violence against Palestinians by radical Jewish settlers. They regularly storm Palestinian towns and villages, burning and damaging property, in response to such attacks. Marauding settlers are rarely held to account for their actions and Palestinians are left to pick up the pieces of the destruction with little recourse to compensation or assistance from Israeli authorities.

‘A mother in her essence’

Gez, 37, and her husband Hananel, were residents of Bruchin, a settlement of some 2,900 in the northern West Bank. She worked as a therapist and on her Facebook page, shared developments in her professional life as well as her thoughts on the war in Gaza, the fallen Israeli soldiers and the hostages still held by Hamas. Meital Ben Yosef, head of the settlement’s local council, told Israeli Army radio that Gez was “all mother. A mother in her essence.”

“A couple of parents were driving to the happiest moment that a parent can experience and the wife is killed on the way. It’s a horrific incident,” she said.

Photos of the car released by the military showed a bullet hole on the passenger side of the windshield and a streak of blood on a back door. Soldiers searched the rugged brush on the sides of the road following the attack, according to video released by the Israeli military.

Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, praised the attack as “heroic” in a video statement Wednesday but stopped short of saying the militant group was behind it.

On Thursday, military checkpoints slowed down traffic on roads in the vicinity of the attack, and many Palestinian motorists were at a standstill as they tried to make their journeys, according to video shared on social media.

Concern about reprisal attacks

The attack sparked outrage and calls for revenge.

“Just as we are flattening Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza, we must flatten the nests of terror in Judea and Samaria,” wrote the Israeli finance minister and a settler firebrand, Bezalel Smotrich, in a post on X, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.

The violence in the West Bank escalated when the war in Gaza erupted with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. Israel has staged frequent raids in the territory, especially but not limited to its north, using ground and air power in violence that has killed many militants but also other Palestinians, some of them throwing rocks to protest the incursions as well as others not involved in confrontations.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said its forces killed five militants in a raid that appeared unrelated to Gez’s killing. Hamas mourned the men as “resistance heroes” but stopped short of claiming them as its fighters.

Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, all territories the Palestinians seek for a future independent state. Around 500,000 Jewish settlers now live in about 130 settlements scattered across the West Bank.

Much of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to Palestinian statehood. Israel views the West Bank as its biblical heartland and believes the fate of the settlements should be determined in peace negotiations, which have been moribund for some 15 years.

Israel says much of the Palestinian militancy in the West Bank is fueled by Iran and views the fighting there as part of its ongoing multifront wars to secure its borders and prevent a second Oct. 7-style attack.

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Associated Press writers Jalal Bwaitel in Ramallah, West Bank, and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut contributed.

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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war