Settlement security chief charged with shooting Palestinian woman at pirate roadblock

Prosecutors on Friday charged the civilian security coordinator of the northern West Bank’s Gidonim Ridge settlement bloc with seriously wounding a woman when he fired on a Palestinian car at an unauthorized roadblock he set up in the Nablus-area village of Aqraba on September 18.

The security coordinator, Pinhas Shem Tov Ran, erected the roadblock, even though it was outside his geographic purview, according to the indictment filed by the Jerusalem District Attorney’s office at the city’s District Court.

Ran, 37, had been admonished repeatedly by military officials, “following several unusual incidents,” and was told to operate only in his designated area and “adhere to guidelines in general, and to the rules of engagement in particular,” the indictment said.

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According to the indictment, Ran was traveling from his home in the illegal Giv’ot Olam outpost to another nearby settlement when he decided to enter Aqraba, where he “stopped some passersby and checked their IDs without justification or authorization.”

He was accompanied by another armed man, identified as a career soldier in the IDF, though the roadblock was not set up in a military capacity, according to prosecutors.

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The two men were riding a Ranger ATV, which the government typically supplies to designated West Bank farming outposts, though the indictment did not specify whether Ran was driving a state-supplied ATV. Such vehicles have repeatedly been used in settler attacks against Palestinians.

After Ran set up a roadblock in Aqraba, a Palestinian driver refused his orders to show an ID and sped away, the indictment said. It added that the driver, who noticed the two men on the ATV were not soldiers and that one wore a face mask. Accordingly, the driver feared that they were about to attack him.

As the car sped away, Ran fired at least three shots at it, injuring the driver’s wife, who was hospitalized for several days and required surgery to remove the bullets, the indictment said. One of the bullets was lodged in her lung, near her heart, it said.

Palestinian media at the time identified the shooting victim as an 18-year-old.

Ran and the other armed man then continued to their destination, and on their way back to Giv’ot Olam stopped in Aqraba, where Ran “searched for the shells at the shooting site to thwart a judicial process,” prosecutors said.

Later, when security officials asked him whether he had heard of a shooting incident in the area, Ran denied having been there or knowing about a shooting, according to the indictment.

Police and the Shin Bet detained Ran at home on October 11. He was charged Friday with causing grievous bodily harm with intent, which carries up to 20 years in prison, and with obstruction of justice, which carries up to three years in prison.

Ran claims he fired in the air after the driver charged the car at him and his companion “in a manner that seemed to them like a ramming attempt,” which forced them to jump aside upon sensing “immediate life-threatening danger,” according to a statement from the far-right Honenu legal aid organization, which is representing him.

The statement did not address the military’s claim that the two men were operating an unauthorized roadblock, or explain how shots fired in the air would have lodged themselves in a passenger’s lung.

Ran is the son of veteran far-right activist Avri Ran, who founded the Giv’ot Olam illegal outpost and also lives there. A younger son, Or, was killed defending Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.

Police had said on Sunday last week that two suspects were arrested over an “extremist violence incident” in Aqraba last month. A strict gag order was placed on the details of the incident or the identity of the suspects.

Honenu at the time identified the two detainees as security personnel, and said last week that one of them had been released to house arrest.

This Sunday, other West Bank civilian security coordinators — known by the Hebrew acronym Ravshatzim — drove their patrol vehicles in a convoy down the Ayalon Highway and rallied in front of the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv in protest against Pinhas Ran’s continued detention.

Ravshatzim in the West Bank are empowered by the IDF to oversee their own communities’ security as part of the military’s regional defense reserve units, known by the Hebrew acronym “Hagmar.”

Amid a surge in settler attacks since the October 7 onslaught, rights groups and legal experts have charged that Hagmar units are blurring the line between civilian settlers and military personnel while using the army’s authority to compound already rampant violence.

Dozens of Hagmar soldiers have reportedly been dismissed in recent years for violations, including attacks on Palestinians. The IDF has in recent months reduced the number of active Hagmar personnel in the West Bank, an unspoken admission of the issues that surround the expansion of their roles after October 7.

Stav Levaton contributed to this report.

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