Samaria Council head moves office near Arab village in response to terror attack

The regional leader invited the Israeli public to join him at his office for the afternoon and evening prayers, “along with Torah lessons and meetings with rabbis and public figures.”

By JNS

Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan announced on Sunday that he was moving his office to the site of the May 14 terrorist attack in which a pregnant Israeli woman was murdered and her husband was wounded.

“Following the severe terrorist attack in which Tzeela Gez, may God avenge her blood, was murdered, the office of the council head was moved to an open tent opposite the village of Bruqin,” Dagan wrote in a message to residents on Sunday.

Bruqin “is a hornet’s nest,” Dagan charged. “We expect the government of Israel to carry out military operations here in Bruqin, just like it has belatedly begun to do—at the cost of blood—in northern Samaria.”

Throughout the day, Torah study sessions led by yeshivah students from the similarly-named nearby Jewish community of Bruchin will be organized at the site, Dagan said.

The regional leader invited the Israeli public to join him at his office for the afternoon and evening prayers, “along with Torah lessons and meetings with rabbis and public figures.”

Security forces apprehended several suspects in the search for the terrorist who shot and killed Gez, 30, and wounded her husband near their hometown of Bruchin as the couple drove to the delivery room.

“As part of the IDF and Shin Bet manhunt for the terrorist who carried out the shooting attack …, IDF soldiers, guided by the Shin Bet, carried out targeted searches in the village of Bruqin, near the scene of the attack,” the Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday.

The baby was delivered in the hospital. The newborn is listed in serious but stable condition. Gez’s sister told reporters on Sunday that the boy remained sedated at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petach Tikvah.

“He was without oxygen for a long time—some 50 minutes—from the moment Tzeela was murdered until he was delivered,” Lotem Sasson told Arutz 7. “Some of the breathing tubes have already been removed, but he is still sedated. I am really hoping to hear better news today.”

“Tzeela has four children who will grow up without a mother, who was so amazing. I was always trying to learn from her how to be a mother. No one can take her place,” the bereaved sister added during the interview.

The Yesha Council, which represents the interests of the some 500,000 Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, has called on the government of Israel to “turn the city centers and villages [in the Palestinian Authority], from which the murderers emerge, into ruins” in response to the attack.

If the IDF “continues to invest enormous efforts to capture a lone terrorist or a weapons cache, and does not change the security perception on the ground, the State of Israel and its citizens will continue to be in danger,” the Yesha Council said, adding, “We are supporting the minister of defense in quickly changing the security perception.”

Palestinian terrorists targeted Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria at least 6,343 times in 2024, according to figures published by the Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) NGO on Feb. 17.

Twenty-seven Israelis were murdered in Judea and Samaria in 2024, and more than 300 others were wounded, the group said in its annual report.