JERUSALEM — A pregnant Israeli woman was killed in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank late Wednesday while en route to a hospital to give birth. The fatal assault, which took the life of 37-year-old Tzeela Gez and seriously injured her unborn child, has once again inflamed tensions across the region and sparked fears of retaliatory violence.
Gez, a therapist and mother of three from the settlement of Bruchin, was traveling with her husband Hananel when their vehicle came under fire. The couple was driving through a winding road in the northern West Bank when a Palestinian gunman opened fire, fatally striking Gez. Doctors managed to deliver her baby, who remains in serious but stable condition.
The assailant fled the scene, prompting a manhunt by Israeli security forces. Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, Israel’s military chief of staff, vowed to track down those responsible. “We will use all the tools at our disposal and reach the murderers to hold them accountable,” Zamir said during a visit to the area on Thursday. The military responded by sealing off several nearby Palestinian villages and setting up checkpoints, which significantly slowed Palestinian traffic.
Photos released by the military show a bullet hole through the passenger side of the windshield and blood smeared on a rear door. Soldiers combed through the brush lining the roadside after the attack, searching for the gunman.
The militant group Hamas praised the shooting as a “heroic” act, though it did not claim responsibility. The killing comes amid a broader Israeli military campaign in the West Bank that has intensified since the October 7 Hamas assault on southern Israel. That conflict, centered in Gaza, has spilled over into the West Bank, with hundreds of Palestinians killed in near-daily Israeli raids targeting militant networks. Many of the dead, according to human rights groups, were civilians or bystanders.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a staunch supporter of the settler movement, called for a hardline response. “Just as we are flattening Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza, we must flatten the nests of terror in Judea and Samaria,” he wrote on X, using the biblical names for the West Bank.
The attack on Gez has raised concerns of reprisal violence by radical Jewish settlers, who have previously responded to Palestinian attacks by storming villages, setting fires, and damaging property with little accountability. Such vigilante actions are rarely prosecuted, and Palestinians are often left without compensation or official recourse.
Tzeela Gez was remembered by neighbors as a devoted mother and compassionate professional. “She was all mother. A mother in her essence,” said Meital Ben Yosef, head of the Bruchin local council. “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.”
Israel has long described its West Bank crackdown as essential to national security, particularly in the wake of escalating threats linked to Hamas and alleged Iranian influence. On Thursday, Israeli forces killed five suspected militants in a separate raid that was not directly connected to the attack on Gez. Hamas praised the slain men as “resistance heroes.”
The West Bank remains a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since its occupation by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, more than 500,000 Israeli settlers have moved into over 130 settlements across the territory. While Israel considers the West Bank part of its historical homeland, much of the international community views the settlements as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to a future Palestinian state.
As both sides brace for more violence, the killing of a mother en route to deliver her child underscores the tragic toll of a conflict that has endured for generations — with no end in sight.
