On 26 February 2023, an unidentified person fatally shot two Israeli settlers in their car in Huwara, a town south of Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

[6] Sources pointed to a Hamas gunman as the assailant,[7][8] but no group claimed responsibility for the shooting.

[3] On March 7, the suspected attacker, 49-year-old Abdel Fattah Hussein Kharousha, was killed along with five other Palestinians during an Israeli raid in Jenin.

[14] Later on the same day, groups of Israeli settlers rioted in the region, carrying out revenge attacks.

An analysis by journalists for +972 Magazine of 14 videos of the assault conducted by 40-50 settlers, who had returned to Za'tara after being repulsed the first time, concluded that the simultaneous attack on Za'atara in which Sameh Aqtesh was shot dead was conducted under Israeli army escort.