Pregnant Israeli woman killed on way to give birth in West Bank shooting attack
Tzeela Gez was in a car driven by her husband when they were targeted by a Palestinian attacker on Wednesday.
A pregnant Israeli woman was fatally shot as she was being driven to hospital in the occupied West Bank to give birth.
Tzeela Gez, who was nine months pregnant, was in a car driven by her husband when they were targeted by a Palestinian attacker late on Wednesday.
Ms Gez died within hours, while doctors barely saved the life of her baby, who was in a serious but stable condition.
Israel said it was trying to prevent such attacks by waging a months-long 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 stopped the 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 on 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,” Lieutenant General 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.
The shooting of Ms Gez, who has 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.
Ms 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 Ms 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.
The attack sparked outrage and calls for revenge.
The violence in the West Bank escalated when the war in Gaza erupted with Hamas’s October 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 against the incursions as well as others not involved in confrontations.
Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East 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 fuelled by Iran and views the fighting there as part of its ongoing multifront wars to secure its borders and prevent a second October 7-style attack.
