After dark in the South Hebron Hills, parents lie awake, listening for the settlers.
A crunch of wheels on the dusty road means it’s time to scoop their children closer, to tell them they are loved, that they will be safe. By the time the engine cuts, car doors slam and the footsteps get louder, another night of terror is in motion.
In the Palestinian village of Umm al-Kheir, residents described masked men in army uniforms overrunning their community last week. The men smashed residents’ cellphones so no one could document the beatings that followed.
In nearby Susiya, five men in similar dress beat Ahmed Nawaja, 38, underneath his olive tree. His daughters cried, he said, as the attackers slammed their rifle butts down on his body.
Violence by Israeli settlers, long aimed at depopulating rural Palestinian parts of the occupied West Bank, had grown common in the months since Prime Minister President Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late December — at the head of a coalition that included far-right settler activists who have been convicted of anti-Arab incitement and have advocated for the annexation of the West Bank.
Palestinian communities where people have been forcibly displaced by settler violence in 2023:
Before Oct. 7
Since Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people and plunged Israel into war on Oct. 7, the pace of the assaults has more than doubled, as the radical settler movement exploits the crisis to hasten demographic change across the territory. At least 11 Palestinian communities have been completely abandoned since the beginning of the year, including six since Oct. 7, according to the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of nongovernmental organizations funded by the European Union.
Itamar Ben Gvir: How an extremist settler became a powerful Israeli minister
The United Nations has recorded 222 settler attacks against Palestinians over the past month. Eight people, including a child, have been killed. Another 64 Palestinians have been injured, more than a quarter by live ammunition.
The list of incidents recorded by Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group that has spent years monitoring the West Bank, grows by the day: On Sunday, Palestinian farmers in Qusra found that 500 olive trees, passed down through generations, had been destroyed; their agricultural land was covered with cement. On Monday, settlers burned olive trees between the villages of Burin and Huwara. On Wednesday, settlers attacked harvesters in Qaryut, built a rock barrier to prevent them from returning to their village “and fired live ammunition at those approaching,” Yesh Din said.
Since Oct. 7, violence from Israeli settlers in the West Bank has increased dramatically, with some Palestinian communities deciding to abandon their villages. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post)
Villagers of Zanuta dismantle their houses on Oct. 30 and pack their belongings before leaving. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post)
the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes, never to return. Their villages were destroyed, or resettled and renamed, their histories erased. It is a deep and enduring trauma that has touched nearly every Palestinian family — one many fear is repeating itself.
At least 1,100 Palestinians were forced to leave their communities between January and the first week of October. In just the past month, more than 900 people have fled. An estimated 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, alongside more than 500,000 settlers, whose numbers have increased by 16 percent over the past five years.
The South Hebron Hills had been home to some 4,000 Palestinian residents, most of them living off their land in Area C, an administrative area covering 60% of the West Bank — once envisioned as part of a future Palestinian state but still under Israeli occupation.
Settler leaders and government ministers now openly describe it as part of Israel. Jewish communities are expanding across the region. Some are brightly lit developments that grow fruit and make wine, others are remote outposts, harbingers of future migration.
In a letter to Netanyahu, published Monday, far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called for a ban on Palestinians harvesting olives close to West Bank settlements. The government, he said, must “create sterile security areas around [Jewish] communities and roads and prevent Arabs from entering them.”
Scores of roads have been closed throughout the West Bank since Oct. 7, by soldiers at checkpoints or with freshly-dug earthen berms. On Wednesday night, dozens of women from settler communities near the Shavei Shomron intersection gathered in protest that their own road had been kept open, following a spate of recent shootings in the area.
“We know it’s not everyone in those [Palestinian] villages,” who poses a threat, “but it’s most of them,” said one protester, Miriam Levi, who was there with her three children. “I’m a mother, I don’t want to be out here protesting, but under these circumstances I have to.”
Jewish communities are expanding across the West Bank. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post )
Militancy is surging in West Bank. Palestinian gunmen have killed at least 15 settlers in 2023, according to U.N. data. But the perpetrators generally hailed from the territory’s cramped cities and refugee camps — where Israeli forces have killed nearly 400 Palestinians this year, the U.N. says — and not from the agrarian communities now being hollowed out by vigilante violence.
“The West Bank is boiling,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, after overnight Israeli drone attacks killed at least eight Palestinians in the city of Jenin, according to Palestinian health authorities. “If we [didn’t] have Gaza today, all our attention would be [on] the West Bank
.”
A crunch of wheels on the dusty road means it’s time to scoop their children closer, to tell them they are loved, that they will be safe. By the time the engine cuts, car doors slam and the footsteps get louder, another night of terror is in motion.
In the Palestinian village of Umm al-Kheir, residents described masked men in army uniforms overrunning their community last week. The men smashed residents’ cellphones so no one could document the beatings that followed.
In nearby Susiya, five men in similar dress beat Ahmed Nawaja, 38, underneath his olive tree. His daughters cried, he said, as the attackers slammed their rifle butts down on his body.
Violence by Israeli settlers, long aimed at depopulating rural Palestinian parts of the occupied West Bank, had grown common in the months since Prime Minister President Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late December — at the head of a coalition that included far-right settler activists who have been convicted of anti-Arab incitement and have advocated for the annexation of the West Bank.
Palestinian communities where people have been forcibly displaced by settler violence in 2023:
Before Oct. 7
Since Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people and plunged Israel into war on Oct. 7, the pace of the assaults has more than doubled, as the radical settler movement exploits the crisis to hasten demographic change across the territory. At least 11 Palestinian communities have been completely abandoned since the beginning of the year, including six since Oct. 7, according to the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of nongovernmental organizations funded by the European Union.
Itamar Ben Gvir: How an extremist settler became a powerful Israeli minister
The United Nations has recorded 222 settler attacks against Palestinians over the past month. Eight people, including a child, have been killed. Another 64 Palestinians have been injured, more than a quarter by live ammunition.
The list of incidents recorded by Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group that has spent years monitoring the West Bank, grows by the day: On Sunday, Palestinian farmers in Qusra found that 500 olive trees, passed down through generations, had been destroyed; their agricultural land was covered with cement. On Monday, settlers burned olive trees between the villages of Burin and Huwara. On Wednesday, settlers attacked harvesters in Qaryut, built a rock barrier to prevent them from returning to their village “and fired live ammunition at those approaching,” Yesh Din said.
Since Oct. 7, violence from Israeli settlers in the West Bank has increased dramatically, with some Palestinian communities deciding to abandon their villages. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post)
Villagers of Zanuta dismantle their houses on Oct. 30 and pack their belongings before leaving. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post)
the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes, never to return. Their villages were destroyed, or resettled and renamed, their histories erased. It is a deep and enduring trauma that has touched nearly every Palestinian family — one many fear is repeating itself.
At least 1,100 Palestinians were forced to leave their communities between January and the first week of October. In just the past month, more than 900 people have fled. An estimated 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, alongside more than 500,000 settlers, whose numbers have increased by 16 percent over the past five years.
The South Hebron Hills had been home to some 4,000 Palestinian residents, most of them living off their land in Area C, an administrative area covering 60% of the West Bank — once envisioned as part of a future Palestinian state but still under Israeli occupation.
Settler leaders and government ministers now openly describe it as part of Israel. Jewish communities are expanding across the region. Some are brightly lit developments that grow fruit and make wine, others are remote outposts, harbingers of future migration.
In a letter to Netanyahu, published Monday, far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called for a ban on Palestinians harvesting olives close to West Bank settlements. The government, he said, must “create sterile security areas around [Jewish] communities and roads and prevent Arabs from entering them.”
Scores of roads have been closed throughout the West Bank since Oct. 7, by soldiers at checkpoints or with freshly-dug earthen berms. On Wednesday night, dozens of women from settler communities near the Shavei Shomron intersection gathered in protest that their own road had been kept open, following a spate of recent shootings in the area.
“We know it’s not everyone in those [Palestinian] villages,” who poses a threat, “but it’s most of them,” said one protester, Miriam Levi, who was there with her three children. “I’m a mother, I don’t want to be out here protesting, but under these circumstances I have to.”
Jewish communities are expanding across the West Bank. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post )
Militancy is surging in West Bank. Palestinian gunmen have killed at least 15 settlers in 2023, according to U.N. data. But the perpetrators generally hailed from the territory’s cramped cities and refugee camps — where Israeli forces have killed nearly 400 Palestinians this year, the U.N. says — and not from the agrarian communities now being hollowed out by vigilante violence.
“The West Bank is boiling,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, after overnight Israeli drone attacks killed at least eight Palestinians in the city of Jenin, according to Palestinian health authorities. “If we [didn’t] have Gaza today, all our attention would be [on] the West Bank
.”
