The day after the Israeli military raid in Jenin, a pair of Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis and injured four more near an Israeli settlement of Eli in the West Bank

The day after the Israeli military raid in Jenin, a pair of Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis and injured four more near an Israeli settlement of Eli in the West Bank. The day after that, hundreds of Israeli settlers entered the neighboring Palestinian community of Turmus Ayya and set fire to dozens of cars and homes.

U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said there had already been high levels of violence throughout the West Bank even before the events of Oct. 7, when gunmen of the Palestinian Hamas terrorist group, which controls the Gaza Strip, entered southern Israel and killed more than 1,200 civilians and Israeli security forces, and kidnapped hundreds more.

Israeli officials pressed forward efforts to approve and begin development on new West Bank settlements in February in response to an attack in which a trio of gunmen opened fire on motorists in the Israeli settlement community of Ma’ale Adimum on Thursday, killing one and injuring eight others. The Biden administration responded that the new settlements would prove “counterproductive” to broader peace efforts in the region.