Wishing love, peace, harmony to the world. Also sharing excerpts
of my third book in trilogy of Israeli Genocide against Palestinians, in
progress.
“Pass through this moment of time in harmony with nature,
and end your journey in content, as an olive falls when it is ripe, blessing
nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.” Marcus
Aurelius
Jewish Settlers Violence
March 25, 2025
HEBRON, West Bank AP — Only a few weeks ago, Hamdan Ballal
stood on a stage in Los Angeles accepting an Oscar for the film “No Other Land’ a
documentary depicting his West Bank village’s struggle against Israel’s
occupation.
On Tuesday, Ballal – his face bruised and clothes still
spotted with blood – recounted to The Associated Press how he was heavily
beaten by an Israeli settler and soldiers the night before. The settler, he
said, kicked his head “like a football” during a settler attack on his village.
The soldiers then detained him and two other Palestinians.
Ballal said he was kept blindfolded for more than 20 hours, sitting on the
floor under a blasting air conditioner. The soldiers kicked, punched or hit him
with a stick whenever they came on their guard shifts, he said. Ballal didn’t
speak Hebrew, but he said he heard them saying his name and the word “Oscar.”
“I realized they were attacking me specifically,” he said in
an interview at a West Bank hospital after his release Tuesday. “When they say
‘Oscar’, you understand. When they say your name, you understand.”
The attack took place Monday night in the southern West Bank
village of Susiya. It was part of the Masafer Yatta region featured in “No
Other Land,” which depicted the Palestinian residents’ attempts to fend off
settler attacks and the military’s plans to demolish their homes.
At around sunset, as residents were ending their daylong
Ramadan fast, roughly two dozen Jewish settlers along with police entered the
village, throwing stones at houses and breaking property, witnesses said.
Around 30 soldiers arrived soon after. Jewish Israelis in an activist group
supporting the villagers showed video of themselves also being attacked, with
settlers hitting their car with sticks and stones.
Ballal said he filmed some of the damage caused by the
settlers. Then he went to his own home and locked it, with his wife and three
young children inside.
“I told myself if they will attack me, if they kill me, I
will protect my family,” he said.
May 29, 2025
UK slammed new Israeli settlements as an obstacle to
Palestinian statehood.
“The U.K. condemns these actions,” Foreign Office Minister
Hamish Falconer said on the X social media platform. “Settlements are illegal
under international law, further imperil the two-state solution, and do not
protect Israel.”
The British government last week imposed new sanctions on
three people, two illegal settler outposts and two organizations that they said
were supporting violence against the Palestinian community in the
Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said at the time that the
illegal settlements were spreading across the West Bank with support of the
Israeli government.
Israel authorized 22 more Jewish settlements in the occupied
West Bank. This would include new settlements and the legalization of outposts
already built without government authorization.
Defense Minister Israel Katz called Thursday's settlement
decision “a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian
state that would endanger Israel.”
The Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace said the
announcement was the most extensive move of its kind since the 1993 Oslo
accords that launched the now-defunct peace process.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and
the Palestinians wanted it to be the main part of their future state. Most of
the international community viewed settlements as illegal and an obstacle to
resolving the decades-old conflict.
Israel had already built well over 100 settlements across
the territory that were home to some 500,000 settlers. The settlements ranged
from small hilltop outposts to fully developed communities with apartment
blocks, shopping malls, factories and parks. The West Bank was home to 3
million Palestinians, who lived under Israeli military rule.
July 6, 2025
Israeli settlers had attacked two Deutsche Welle reporters
in the occupied West Bank, Germany's international broadcaster said on
Saturday.
A correspondent and a cameraman were pelted with large
stones and chased on Friday.
The pair were in the Palestinian village of Sinjil, north of
Ramallah, to report on a planned protest against violence by radical settlers. They
were reportedly able to escape unharmed, but the cameraman's car was badly
damaged.
DW director Peter Limbourg condemned the attack.
"This attack cannot be justified by anything, and we
demand quite clearly: the Israeli government must guarantee the safety of all
journalists in the West Bank," he said in a statement.
According to Deutsche Welle, “which is funded by the German
state but operates independently, representatives of other international media
were also present during the attack. They were also caught in the hail of
stones from the settlers and had to flee.”
July 12, 2025
Israeli settlers killed a 20-year-old Palestinian-American
man in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health and an
eyewitness, as settler violence against Palestinians ramped up in the
occupied territory.
Twenty-year-old Sayfollah Musallet “was martyred after being
severely beaten all over his body by settlers in the town of Sinjil, north of
Ramallah,” the health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
The municipality of Sinjel said that Musallet died following
a “barbaric attack” carried out by settlers as part of “daily assaults” on
local residents. It alleged Israeli forces stormed the area at the same time as
the settlers’ attack, obstructing the work of paramedics and volunteers.
A friend of the deceased man’s family told CNN he was with
Musallet and took him to a hospital in Ramallah, adding the young man was an
American citizen born in Tampa, Florida. Musallet’s family was demanding the US
State Department lead an investigation into the incident.
“We are devastated that our beloved Sayfollah Musallet
nicknamed Saif was brutally beaten to death by Israeli settlers while he was
protecting his family’s land from settlers who were attempting to steal it,”
the family said in a statement. “We demand justice.”
The US State Department said in a statement to CNN that it was
aware of reports of the death of an American in the West Bank, without
providing a name.
“Out of respect for the privacy of the family and loved ones
during this difficult time, we have no further comment,” a department
spokesperson said.
Musallet ran a business in Tampa and had been in the West
Bank since June 4 to visit family and friends, the family statement said.
A second Palestinian man died in the attack in Sinjel after
he was shot in the chest by settlers, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
Ten others were wounded in the same attack, it added. The municipality said in
a social media post Friday that settlers had also attacked an ambulance while
paramedics were working near Sinjel.
In a video accompanying the post which CNN had geolocated to
the outskirts of Sinjel an ambulance could be seen with a smashed windscreen
and rear window.
Following the attacks, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs criticized what it called Israel’s expanding settlement projects in the
occupied territory and called for urgent action to hold the perpetrators of
settler violence accountable.
Israel had ramped up military operations in the West Bank,
displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians and razing entire communities. Multiple
American citizens had been killed in the West Bank in the past few years,
according to Palestinian officials and eyewitnesses, including a 14-year-old
boy whom Israeli military shot dead last April.
Israeli soldiers also shot dead a 26-year-old woman during a
protest against an Israeli settlement in September 2024.
July 29, 2025
A prominent Palestinian activist who had worked on an
Oscar-winning documentary was killed on Monday during an attack by Israeli
settlers in the occupied West Bank, according to local journalists and
officials. Odeh Hathalin, who was a consultant on “No Other Land” a film that
documented Israeli settler and military attacks on the West Bank community of
Masafer Yatta, was shot in the village of Umm al-Khair, in that same community.
Yinon Levi, an Israeli settler whose US sanctions were
lifted by the Trump administration in January, was arrested at the scene and
released on house arrest on Tuesday, his lawyer told reporters. Israeli police
said in a statement without naming Levi that an Israeli citizen was taken into
custody “for questioning on suspicion of reckless conduct resulting in death
and unlawful use of a firearm.”
Hathalin’s shooting was first reported by Yuval Abraham, the
Israeli investigative journalist who co-directed “No Other Land.” A video
shared by Abraham on X showed Levi firing a gun multiple times as he confronted
Palestinian villagers. CNN geolocated the video to the site of the incident. In
the video, Levi – carrying a handgun, standing in front of a bulldozer – was
seen grappling with a villager and pushing away the man filming him. He then
began to fire to his side and in the air, then moved towards the handful of
Palestinians. The villagers soon began to run away. It was unclear from the
footage what Levi was shooting at. Another video obtained by CNN showed a man
who appeared to be Hathalin bleeding on the ground. The Palestinian health
ministry said later he had died of his injuries.
Levi was sanctioned by the Biden administration and the
European Union last year but was removed from the US sanctions list shortly
after President Donald Trump took office that year. In its initial sanctions
announcement in April 2024, the US Department of Treasury State Department said
that Levi “regularly led groups of violent extremists who engaged in actions
creating an atmosphere of fear in the West Bank. It added that groups led by
Levi assaulted Palestinian civilians, threatened them with additional violence
if they did not leave their homes, burned their fields, and destroyed their
property.”
Many settlers were armed, and violence in the West Bank had
surged since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. At least 964 Palestinians had
been killed since then by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations, as of July 15th. Settlers
had a strong influence on Israeli politics, and in the rare cases where they were
arrested for violent attacks against Palestinians, they were often released
without charge.
August 7, 2025
The shooting occurred in Umm al-Khair, a village that had
long weathered settler violence in an area profiled in the Oscar-winnng film
‘No Other Land” Settler attacks on Palestinians had spiked since the
outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
“Odeh’s killing is another horrific example of how
Palestinians, both in Gaza and in the West Bank, are currently living without
any sort of protection, fully exposed to Israeli violence, while Israeli
soldiers or settlers can kill them in broad daylight and enjoy full impunity
while the world watches," said Sarit Michaeli, the international outreach
director for B’Tselem.
August 10, 2025
CAIRO/JERUSALEM Reuters: A prominent Al Jazeera journalist,
who had previously been threatened by Israel, was killed along with four
colleagues in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday in an attack condemned by
journalists and rights groups.
Israel's military said it targeted and killed Anas Al
Sharif, alleging he had headed a Hamas militant cell and was involved in rocket
attacks on Israel.
Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatari government,
rejected the assertion, and before his death Al Sharif had also denied such
claims by Israel.
"Anas Al Sharif and his colleagues were among the last
remaining voices in Gaza conveying the tragic reality to the world," Al
Jazeera said.
Al Sharif, 28, was among a group of four Al Jazeera
journalists and an assistant who died in an airstrike on a tent near Al Shifa
Hospital in eastern Gaza City, Gaza officials and Al Jazeera said. A hospital
official said two other people died. A sixth journalist, local freelance
reporter Mohammad Al-Khaldi, was also killed in the strike, medics at Al Shifa
Hospital said on Monday.
Calling Al Sharif "one of Gaza's bravest
journalists", Al Jazeera said the attack was a "desperate attempt to
silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza".
The other journalists killed were Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim
Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, Al Jazeera said.
"The deliberate targeting of journalists by Israel in
the Gaza Strip reveals how these crimes are beyond imagination," Qatari
Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, said on X.
The U.N. human rights office condemned the killings, saying
the actions by Israel's military represented a "grave breach of
international humanitarian law" as Palestinians reported the heaviest
bombardments in weeks.
“British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is gravely concerned
about the repeated targeting of journalists in Gaza,” his spokesperson said.
People gathered at Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in the heart of
the Gaza Strip on Monday to mourn the journalists. Friends, colleagues and
relatives consoled each another, many wiping away tears as they bid farewell.
Al Sharif was previously part of a Reuters team which in
2024 won a Pulitzer Prize in the category of Breaking News Photography for
coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
Al Jazeera said Al Sharif had left a social media message to
be posted in the event of his death that read, "I never hesitated to
convey the truth as it is, without distortion or misrepresentation, hoping that
God would witness those who remained silent".
Israel's military had named Al Sharif in October as one of
six Gaza journalists it alleged were members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, citing documents it said showed lists of people who completed training
courses and salaries.
“Al Jazeera categorically rejects the Israeli occupation
forces’ portrayal of our journalists as terrorists and denounces their use of
fabricated evidence,” the network said in a statement at the time. The
Committee to Protect Journalists, which in July urged the international
community to protect Al Sharif, said in a statement that Israel had failed to
provide any evidence to back up its allegations against him.
Al Sharif, whose X account showed more than 500,000
followers, posted on the platform minutes before his death that Israel had been
intensely bombarding Gaza City for more than two hours.
"The assassination of journalists and the intimidation
of those who remain pave the way for a major crime that the occupation is
planning to commit in Gaza City," Hamas said in a statement.
August 11, 2025
TEL AVIV, Israel AP — New video footage showed the moment a
Palestinian activist was killed as an Israeli settler fired toward him during a
confrontation with unarmed Palestinians in the occupied West Bank last month.
The video released Sunday by B'Tselem, an Israeli human
rights group, showed Israeli settler Yinon Levi firing a gun toward the person
filming. The footage was cut but the camera kept rolling as the person moaned
in pain.
B’Tselem said it obtained the video from the family of Odeh
Hathalin, 31, an activist, English teacher and father of three who was shot and
killed on July 28, and who they said had filmed it. Levi, who was shown
firing his gun twice in a video shot by another witness and obtained by The
Associated Press, was briefly detained and then released from house arrest by
an Israeli court, which cited lack of evidence.
Mourners attended the funeral of Palestinian activist Odeh
Hathalin, who was killed by Israeli settler according to Palestinian health
officials, in the West Bank Bedouin village of Umm al-Khair.
August 12, 2025
While the world was waiting and watching for a settlement of
the Central European crisis, Gazans were dying from starvation and from
wounds inflicted by Israeli bombs. Much of the world had ignored the suffering
there in the same way nations did during the 1930s and 1940s when the United
States and its allies were indifferent to the Nazi slaughter of millions of
Jews in Europe.
August 15, 2025
TEL AVIV, Israel AP— Twenty years ago, Israel withdrew from
the Gaza Strip, dismantling 21 Jewish settlements and pulling out its forces.
The Friday anniversary of the start of the landmark disengagement came as
Israel was mired in a nearly two-year war with Hamas that had devastated
the Palestinian territory and meant it was likely to keep troops there long
into the future. On Thursday, Smotrich boasted of a settlement expansion plan
east of Jerusalem that would “bury” the idea of a future Palestinian state.
Israel couldn’t justify the military or economic cost of
maintaining the heavily fortified settlements in Gaza, explained Kobi Michael,
a senior researcher at the Misgav Institute and the Institute for National
Security Studies think tanks. There were around 8,000 Israeli settlers and 1.5
million Palestinians in Gaza in 2005.
“There was no chance for these settlements to exist or
flourish or become meaningful enough to be a strategic anchor,” he said. “By
contrast, there are more than 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, most
living in developed settlement blocs that have generally received more support
from Israeli society, Michael said. Most of the world considers the settlements
illegal under international law.
Because Israel withdrew unilaterally, without any
coordination with the Palestinian Authority, it enhanced Hamas' stature among
Palestinians in Gaza.”
Israeli occupation was returning to Gaza, many believed.
After 22 months of war, Israeli troops controlled more than 75% of Gaza, and
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of maintaining security control long
term after the war.
August 16, 2025
"Assassination," wrote George Bernard Shaw,
"is the extreme form of censorship." This truth was brought home to
the world this week, said Binoy Kampmark on Middle East Monitor, when a
prominent Palestinian journalist, Anas al-Sharif, was killed along with three
of his Al Jazeera colleagues by an air strike on a press tent in Gaza City.
September 1, 2025
KFAR MALIK, West Bank, JERUSALEM Reuters: Palestinians in
the Israeli-occupied West Bank were facing
severe water shortages that they said were being driven by
increasing attacks on scarce water sources by extremist Jewish settlers. Across
the West Bank in Palestinian communities, residents were reporting shortages
that had left taps in homes dry and farms without irrigation. In Ramallah, one
of the largest Palestinian cities in the West Bank and the administrative
capital of the Palestinian Authority, residents facing water shortages were now
relying on public taps.
"We only get water at home twice a week, so people are
forced to come here," said Umm Ziad, as she filled empty plastic bottles
with water alongside other Ramallah residents.
The United Nations recorded 62 incidents of Jewish settlers
vandalizing water wells, pipelines, irrigation networks and other water-related
infrastructure in the West Bank in the first six months of the year.
The Israeli military acknowledged it had received multiple
reports of Israeli civilians intentionally causing damage to water
infrastructure but that no suspects had been identified. Among the targets had
been a freshwater spring and a water distribution station in Ein Samiya, around
16 km northeast of Ramallah, serving around 20 nearby Palestinian villages and
some city neighborhoods.
Settlers had taken over the spring that many Palestinians had
used for generations to cool off in the hot summer months. Palestinian public
utility Jerusalem Water Undertaking said the Ein Samiya water distribution
station had become a frequent target of settler vandalism.
"Settler violence has escalated dramatically," said
Abdullah Bairait, 60, a resident of nearby Kfar Malik, standing on a hilltop
overlooking the spring.
"They enter the spring stations, break them, remove
cameras, and cut off the water for hours," he said.
The Ein Samiya spring and Kfar Malik village had been
increasingly surrounded by Jewish Israeli settlements. The United Nations and
most foreign governments considered settlements in the West Bank to be illegal
under international law and an obstacle to the establishment of a future
Palestinian state.
According to the United Nations' humanitarian office,
settlers carried out multiple attacks targeting water springs and vital water
infrastructure in the Ramallah, Salfit and Nablus areas between June 1 and July
14. The Ein Samiya water spring had been repeatedly attacked, it said in a July
report.
Kareem Jubran, director of field research at Israeli rights
group B'Tselem, told Reuters that settlers had taken control over most natural
springs in the West Bank in recent years and prevented Palestinians from
accessing them.
SETTLER VIOLENCE
Palestinians had long faced a campaign of intimidation,
harassment and physical violence by extremist settlers, who represented a
minority of Jewish settlers living in the West Bank. Palestinians said they
feared the rise in settler violence was part of a campaign to drive them from
the land. The United Nations had registered 925 such incidents in the first
seven months of this year, a 16% year-on-year increase.
Reuters reported on Sunday that Israeli officials said the
government was now considering annexing the territory after France and other
Western nations said they would recognize a Palestinian state that month. The
Palestinian Authority wanted a future Palestinian state to encompass West Bank,
East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians in the West Bank had long struggled to access
water. The Western-backed Palestinian Authority exercised limited civic rule in
parts of the territory and relied on Israeli approvals to develop and expand
water infrastructure. Palestinian officials and rights groups said that was
rarely given.
B'Tselem said in an April 2023 report that Palestinians were
facing a chronic water crisis, while settlers had an abundance of water.
"The water shortage in the West Bank was the
intentional outcome of Israel's deliberately discriminatory policy, which viewed
water as another means for controlling the Palestinians," B'Tselem wrote
in the report. Across the West Bank, water tanks were common in Palestinian
homes, storing rainwater or water delivered by trucks due to an already
unreliable piped water network that had been exacerbated by the settler
attacks.
Along with traveling long distances to collect water,
Palestinians had become reliant on costly water deliveries to manage the
chronic water crisis that they feared would only grow.
"If the settlers continue their attacks, we will have
conflict on water," said Wafeeq Saleem, who was collecting water from a
public tap outside Ramallah. "Water is the most important thing for
us."
October 21, 2025
A 55-year-old Palestinian woman had been taken to hospital
after being clubbed over the head by a masked Jewish settler as she was picking
olives. The unprovoked attack, which took place on Sunday morning in the
Palestinian village of Turmus Ayya in the occupied West Bank, was captured on
video by US journalist Jasper Nathaniel.
Mr. Nathaniel said the settler knocked the woman unconscious
with his stick, before hitting her again as she lay on the ground. She had been
named as Afaf Abu Alia, known locally as Umm Saleh.
The Israel Defense Forces told the BBC the confrontation was
dispersed after its forces arrived, and that it "strongly condemns any
form of violence" by settlers.
But Mr. Nathaniel rejected this account, saying "no
Israeli forces showed up to the attack at any point".
He said Israeli soldiers had been on-site prior to the
attack and had "lured" him and others into an "ambush". He
said soldiers "sped off" just before the settlers launched the
assault. The BBC had put this specific allegation to the IDF.
At least 80% of residents of Turmus Ayya hold US
citizenship or residency, according to Israeli media. Mr. Nathaniel is also a
US citizen.
He shared messages on social media that he said were between
him and a US embassy official, who told him they were not in a position to
offer to protect him nor the US citizens in the area.
The young male attacker was seen in the footage wielding a
large wooden stick with a knot at one end, reminiscent of a club, before he
swinged it overhead and struck Mrs. Afaf Abu Alia.
"It's the most vivid image that's ever been seared in
my mind," Mr. Nathaniel told the BBC.
"He swings it one time and I saw her body go completely
limp. And then he stood over her and hit her twice more."
The mother of five was then seen bleeding as she was carried
into a vehicle to be taken to hospital. She was initially admitted to an
intensive care unit but was later in a stable condition, doctors said.
Her cousin, Hamdi Abu Alia, told the BBC that medical staff
found she had been struck twice in the head. Amin Abu Alia, the mayor of the
adjacent village al-Mughayyir, confirmed details of the attack to the BBC.
Now recovering at home, Afaf Abu Alia said she was still in
pain, with 20 stitches in her head, and bruises on her arms and legs that left
her unable to sleep. She said the family had been blocked from its own farmland
by settlers, and that they had been renting land elsewhere to grow olives this
year.
"I'd return there today if I could, I'm not afraid of
them," Afaf said. But she also acknowledged the situation was becoming
riskier.
"They weren't like this at the start of the war,"
she said. "In this one year, they've escalated more than in all the years
before."
One man had been arrested in connection with her assault.
Arrests like this were rare, and convictions rarer still. The Israeli human
rights organization Yesh Din found that, over the past two decades, more than
93% of police investigations into Israeli offences against Palestinians in the
West Bank were closed with no charges filed.
The attack was part of a wider incident in which at least 15
masked settlers were seen hurling stones and attacking other Palestinians who
were harvesting olives, as well as activists who had arrived to support them,
including Mr. Nathaniel. At least one car was torched. Others had their windows
smashed. It was one of a spate of attacks in recent weeks linked to the olive
harvest, which officially began on 9 October.
The harvest is an age-old ritual that forms a major part
of Palestinian culture. It is also an economic necessity for many, but is
increasingly precarious.
Farmers across the West Bank, internationally regarded as
Palestinian land occupied by Israel, faced heightened risks during harvest
season, including organized assaults and the use of force by Israeli security
forces to block roads and Palestinians' access to their lands. Of the 71
settler attacks documented by the UN's humanitarian office, OCHA, across the
West Bank between 7 and 13 October, half were related to the ongoing harvest
season. The attacks affected Palestinians in 27 villages.
In 2025, more than 3,200 Palestinians had been injured in
settler attacks across the West Bank, according to OCHA.
Shortly after entering office, US President Donald Trump
cancelled a range of sanctions imposed on Israeli settlers by his predecessor
Joe Biden.
October 22, 2025
Since the killing of a 14-year-old
Palestinian-American, Amer Rabee, by Israeli forces in the town in April
protests against settler violence and the military's perceived failure to curb
it had provoked regular clashes with settlers.
More broadly, settler violence was surging across the West
Bank. The U.N. said the first half of 2025 had seen 757 settler attacks causing
casualties or property damage — a 13% increase compared with the same period
last year.
The first week of olive harvest season had seen more than
150 settler attacks and over 700 olive trees uprooted, broken or poisoned,
according to Muayyad Shaaban, who headed an office in the Palestinian Authority
that was tracking the violence.
November 7, 2025
As guardian of the occupied West Bank's oldest olive tree,
Salah Abu Ali pruned its branches and gathered its fruit even as violence
plagued the Palestinian territory during this year's harvest.
"This is no ordinary tree. We're talking about history,
about civilization, about a symbol," the 52-year-old said proudly, smiling
behind his thick beard in the village of Al-Walajah, south of Jerusalem.
Abu Ali said experts had estimated the tree to be between
3,000 and 5,500 years old. It had endured millennia of drought and war in this
parched land scarred by conflict. Around the tree's vast trunk and its dozen
offshoots—some named after his family members, Abu Ali had cultivated a small
oasis of calm.
A few steps away, the Israeli separation wall had cut off
the West Bank, standing 16 feet high, crowned with razor wire. More than half
of Al-Walajah's original land was now on the far side of the Israeli security
wall. Yet so far, the village had been spared the settler assaults that had
marred this year's olive harvest, leaving many Palestinians injured.
Israel had occupied the West Bank since 1967, and some of
the 500,000 Israelis living in the Palestinian territory had attacked farmers
trying to access their trees almost every day this year since the season began
in mid-October. The Palestinian Authority's Colonization and Wall Resistance
Commission, based in Ramallah, documented 2,350 such attacks in the West Bank
in October. Almost none of the perpetrators had been held to account by the
Israeli authorities. Israeli forces often dispersed Palestinians with tear gas
or blocked access to their own land, AFP journalists witnessed on several
occasions.
But in Al-Walajah for now, Abu Ali was free to care for the
tree. In a good year, he said, it could yield from 500 to 600 pounds of olives.
This year, low rainfall led to slim pickings in the West Bank, including for
the tree whose many nicknames included the Elder, the Bedouin Tree and Mother
of Olives.
"It has become a symbol of Palestinian endurance. The
olive tree represents the Palestinian people themselves, rooted in this land
for thousands of years," said Al-Walajah mayor Khader Al-Araj.
The Palestinian Authority's agriculture ministry even
recognized the tree as a Palestinian natural landmark and appointed Abu Ali as
its official caretaker. "The oil from this tree is exceptional. The older
the tree, the richer the oil," said Abu Ali. He noted that the precious
resource, which he called "green gold, costs four to five times more than
regular oil.” Tourists once came in droves to see the tree, but numbers had
dwindled since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Abu Ali said, with
checkpoints tightening across the West Bank. "I've become part of the
tree. I can't live without it," he said.
Umm Shukry inspected her olive trees one by one, just as she
did every year for a decade. But this olive harvest season was different.
Nearly all her trees were damaged; their branches bare and brittle.
Examining each limb, she felt exhausted with sorrow. “I am
suffocated. I am suffocated from seeing my hard work turn out like this,” she
told CNN. “I used to spend so much time here under the scorching heat, taking
care of them. we’ve had this land for over 50 years.”
For the past two years, the 72-year-old had been prevented
from accessing her land, cut off by settler violence and Israeli army
restrictions. The Israeli settlers living there had assaulted and threatened
her family, she said, forcing them to leave their land out of fear. During
their absence, settlers sent cows to graze on their olive trees, Umm Shukry’s
son Shukry Shehadeh, explained. Neighbors sent him videos of settlers damaging
the land. He returned to find his home ransacked, solar panels stolen, and
water tanks and irrigation pipes destroyed. And perhaps most painfully, there
were no olives in sight.
“They forced us to leave, and then they used extreme
violence to destroy our olives, our home, our belongings. I am struggling to
comprehend this shock,” Shehadeh said.
Settler attacks on Shehadeh’s farm were part of a systematic
pattern of settler impunity amid a sharp increase in attacks against
Palestinians, particularly in the past two years. In the first half of 2025,
there were 757 settler attacks that caused casualties or property damage – a
13% increase compared with the same period last year, according to the United
Nations’ human rights office. This year’s harvest season had also seen some of
the most brazen violence in recent years. Palestinian olive pickers had been
attacked at least 259 times since the harvest season began last month,
according to figures gathered by the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and
Wall Resistance Commission. And as a result, more than 4,000 trees and saplings
had been vandalized, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs.
Many of those attacks had been widely documented and videos
had surfaced online, showing some Palestinians left bloodied and beaten.
The UN had urged Israel, as the occupying power, to prevent
further attacks in the West Bank.
Palestinians said they had no recourse to seek justice when
they were attacked, because they saw the army as abetting the settlers. Under
what activists called a two-tiered legal system in the occupied West Bank,
Palestinians were subject to military law, while Israeli settlers were subject
to Israeli civilian law.
Over the past two years, the Shehadehs had made several
attempts to return to their land and their crops – only to be pushed back by
settlers, the army or both. They returned last Friday accompanied by Jewish and
Israeli activists with the Israeli human rights organization Rabbis for Human
Rights, one of several that brought together hundreds of foreign volunteers to
accompany and support Palestinian farmers during their annual harvest.
Sometimes there was safety in numbers, but not always. Palestinians
and activists across the West Bank had been assaulted or detained as they
attempted peacefully to harvest olives. On October 27, Jewish activists sent
CNN videos of Israeli soldiers and settlement security detaining farmers in the
town of Qarawat Bani Hassan while they were harvesting olives.
November 8, 2025
Saturday, Israeli settlers staged two attacks on Palestinian
farmers, paramedics, activists and journalists in the occupied West Bank as
settler violence reached new highs in the territory. Palestinian health
officials said 11 people were injured in an attack by Israeli settlers in the
West Bank, including journalists, medics, international activists and farmers. The
attack came days after the U.N. humanitarian office said there had been more
Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank in
October than in any other month since the office began keeping track in 2006.
There were more than 260 attacks, or an average of eight incidents per day, the
office reported.
Activists and medics had flocked to this year’s olive
harvest to help Palestinian farmers safely reach and return from their fields.
The groups had repeatedly come under attack over the past few weeks.
A video circulating in Palestinian media showed the inside
of a West Bank hospital where the injured — bandaged and bloody — were brought
from Saturday’s attack on the town of Beita. Jonathan Pollak, a longtime
solidarity activist, was part of the group attacked. He told the AP in an
interview that he was picking olives when suddenly dozens of masked Israeli
settlers, armed with clubs, descended, chasing them and lobbing rocks. He ran
down a steep hill to avoid the onslaught. Pollak said he saw five settlers
converge on a journalist and her security guard. He watched the settlers beat
and bludgeon Raneen Sawfta, denting her helmet. Pollak himself was hit in the
back of the head with a rock and taken to the hospital.
Hamad al-Jagoub abu Rabia, a volunteer with the Red Crescent
in Beita, was also injured after going to help her—hit in the head with a rock
and later taken to hospital.
"I never imagined a human being created by God would do
this," he said. "If they had an iota of humanity, they would have
never done this to a woman. If it wasn't for her helmet, she could have
died."
Speaking shortly after his release from the hospital, Pollak
said it would be wrong to think of the attack as an isolated action taken by
extremist settlers. To him, it was just the latest episode in a string of
similar onslaughts.
Activist Oded Yedaya, an Israeli photographer and
administrator of the Minshar School of Art in Tel Aviv, had to be hospitalized
after he was badly beaten, according to Pollak. Images obtained by CNN showed Yedaya’s
entire face and torso bloodied, with a white cloth wrapped around his head.
Pollak told CNN Yedaya suffered fractures to the cheekbone
and jaw.
“It’s a pattern we see every day,” said Pollak. “This is
just one finger in the iron fist of Israeli policy aiming to ethnically cleanse
Palestinians from their land.”
Rights groups said that arrests for settler violence were
rare, and prosecutions even rarer. Israel’s left-leaning Haaretz newspaper
reported in 2022 that based on statistics from the Israeli police, charges were
pressed in only 3.8% of cases of settler violence, with most cases being opened
and closed without any action being taken.
Also Saturday, Palestinian paramedics reported another
settler attack in a nearby village, Burin. The Palestinian Red Crescent said
settlers had injured four international activists and one 57-year-old man.
The settlers descended from a hill and “started hurling huge
rocks at us, and we had to flee”, Pollak told Al Jazeera. He said the assault
led to more than a dozen injuries that required medical attention, including a
journalist who was bludgeoned by the settlers, and a 70-year-old activist who
had his cheekbone and jaw broken.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said in a statement
that five journalists – Raneen Sawfta, Mohammed al-Atrash, Louay Saeed, Nasser
Ishtayeh and Nael Bouaitel – were injured in the assault.
November 12, 2025
Dozens of Israeli settlers launched an arson attack on an
agricultural area in the occupied West Bank Tuesday evening, according to
Palestinian activists in the area, marking the latest such attack in what had
been a surge of settler violence. The attack took place in the town of
Beit Lid east of Tulkarm, damaging the Deir Sharaf Bedouin village and
Al-Juneidi dairy factory, videos showed and residents told CNN. Footage
obtained by CNN showed smoke engulfing the area, with Palestinian women heard
shouting in the background, and men carrying extinguishers and water buckets
scrambling to put out the fires. Videos showed torched trucks, tents and metal
sheds, and smashed car windows.
Residents said Palestinian civil defense and firefighters
arrived at the scene about an hour after the fires started. Another video
filmed by a Palestinian resident showed the settlers coming down a hill toward
the Bedouin village.
This attack was the latest in a surge of settler violence
against Palestinians in the West Bank, which had been taking place on a
near-daily basis since mid-October. Israeli off-duty officer Yuval Ben Ari was
beaten by dozens of settlers on the occupied West Bank, while he was assisting
Palestinians in harvesting olives. He was hospitalized and received four
stitches.
In a phone interview with CNN, Yuval Ben Ari said seeing
videos of Palestinians being “brutally beaten” by settlers every day compelled
him to go out and support them.
“I think it’s important for Israelis to get out of bed and
out of the house and do real activism instead of just liking content on
Facebook or retweeting an article,” he said.
He was standing alongside seven Israeli activists on a
Palestinian farm picking olives early Saturday morning, when he saw at least 20
masked settlers come down the hill brandishing clubs and bats.
He said he knew they were about to “terrorize the entire
area.
“I stood in front of them and said, ‘I ask you not to do it.
You don’t want to do it,’” he said, before revealing to them that he was a
reservist. But that didn’t stop the attack, he said, and he suffered a head
injury and minor concussion that required hospitalization.
“I was soaking blood and in pain. But after I managed to
stand up, the settlers shouted at me saying, ‘Don’t ever come here again. Don’t
betray your own people.’”
CCTV footage of the arson attack obtained by CNN then showed
the settlers attacking the dairy factory, brandishing clubs and setting fire to
parked vehicles. One of the vehicles – a cargo truck bearing the dairy
factory’s logo – appeared to be completely torched, with a thick cloud of black
smoke rising from it. Monjed Aljuneidi,
an executive of Al-Juneidi Dairy and Food Company said the scene was
“indescribable.” He recalled dozens of settlers scaling the factory fences from
multiple directions.
“I think it was just a message to scare us, to scare our
employees, to try to enforce their reality on the ground, but we will continue
operations, they can’t stop us,” he said.
In the nearby Bedouin community of Deir Sharaf, residents
told CNN at least four Palestinians were injured and required hospitalization
from the attack. They said settlers beat them and killed four of their sheep.
Fifteen-year-old Nabil Dueis was tending to his livestock
when the settlers rampaged the area.
“It was terrifying, especially for the women and children, I
was defenseless against 100 of them, we need protection from the state” he told
CNN.
According to the IDF, the settlers then attacked Israeli
soldiers and damaged an Israeli military vehicle.
Israeli Police initially said it had arrested four suspects
for questioning following what it called “extreme violence.” at the site. But
by Wednesday evening, police said they had released three of the suspects.
The Palestinian economy ministry on Wednesday called on the
international community to take action to stop the attacks. In Tuesday’s
incident, perpetrators set fire to four trucks loaded with products from
Al-Juneidi, and smashed windows and other property, it said.
November 13, 2025
Israeli settlers torched and defaced a mosque in a
Palestinian village in the central West Bank overnight, scribbling hateful
messages in a show of defiance, a day after some Israeli leaders condemned a
recent attack by settlers against Palestinians.
One bucket at a time, Palestinian workers cleared sand and
crumbling mortar from the remains of a former medieval fortress turned museum
in Gaza City, damaged by two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
A dozen workers in high visibility jackets worked by hand to
excavate the bombarded buildings that remain of the Pasha Palace Museum—which
reputedly once housed Napoleon Bonaparte during a one-night stay in Gaza—stacking
stones to be reused in one pile, and rubble to be discarded in another.
"The Pasha Palace Museum is one of the most important
sites destroyed during the recent war on Gaza City," Hamouda al-Dahdar,
the cultural heritage expert in charge of the restoration works, told AFP,
adding that more than 70 percent of the palace's buildings were destroyed.
As of October 2025, the UN's cultural heritage agency,
UNESCO, had identified damage at 114 sites since the start of the war in Gaza
on October 7, 2023, including the Pasha Palace. Other damaged sites included
the Saint Hilarion Monastery complex—one of the oldest Christian monasteries in
the Middle East—and Gaza City's Omari Mosque.
“Many houses and cars were not attacked, but rather the
attack was on a religious symbol to provoke Muslims with offensive phrases
against the Prophet Muhammad and Muslims,” Abdul Rahim Zidan said in an
interview with state-run Palestine TV.
Images shared by the ministry showed writing in Hebrew on
the exterior of the mosque saying, “Mohammed is a pig,” a reference to Islam’s
prophet, and “Not afraid of Avi Bluth.”
Bluth is the
Israel Defense Forces commander in the West Bank, who issued a statement on
Wednesday condemning the settler attacks and calling the perpetrators an
anarchist fringe youth.
Images showed parts of the interior damaged by fire, with a
pile of charred debris scattered across the ground. The walls appeared
blackened with smoke and heat marks, and the glass of the windows smashed.
November 14, 2025
The marks of the attack on Hamida Mosque, near Deir Istiya
in the occupied West Bank, were still scattered on the ground outside. Charred
furniture, lecterns and smoky curls of carpet were piled around the entrance, its
guts emptied, and debris cleared, in time for Friday prayers.
Dozens of men arrived for the prayers in a show of defiance,
their backs turned towards the scorched and blackened wall. The imam, Ahmad
Salman, told the BBC the attack on Thursday was a message from Jewish settlers,
amid a wave of settler violence across the West Bank.
"The message they want to send is that they can reach
anywhere, into cities, into villages, that they can kill civilians and burn
houses and mosques." "I feel it in my soul," he said. "It's
not right to touch places of prayer, wherever they are."
But there was a message here, too, for Israel's regional
military chief scrawled in Hebrew on the mosque's exterior wall: "We're
not afraid of you, Avi Bluth."
But hardline expansionist settlers enjoyed government
support, “which some believe is pushing the West Bank towards a dangerous
confrontation.”
The annual olive harvest, when Palestinians tried to access
their farmland, often marked a spike in violence, but the attacks this year had
broken UN records. The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs registered more than
260 settler attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties or damage to property
in October alone, the highest monthly count since they began monitoring in
2006.
November 16, 2025
Palestinian health officials said Sunday that a 19-year-old
Palestinian man became the seventh person to be killed in the West Bank in the
past two weeks by Israeli fire. The spike in violence had been accompanied by a
surge in settler attacks.
In addition to Sunday’s clashes, the Palestinian Health
Ministry in the West Bank said six teenagers — ages 15 to 17 — were shot and
killed by Israeli fire in four separate shootings over the past two weeks.
On Sunday, Netanyahu cast settler violence as the work of a
few extremists. But Palestinians and rights groups said the violence was
carried out by settlers with impunity from Israel’s far-right government.
Settler leaders and their allies held top positions in Netanyahu's government,
including the Cabinet ministers who oversaw the national police force and West
Bank settlement policies.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week said, “there’s
concern that the events in the West Bank could undermine what we’re doing in
Gaza.”
U.N. Human Rights Commissioner spokesperson Thameen
Al-Kheetan had said the U.N. recorded more than 260 attacks by Israeli settlers
against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank in October, more than
in any month since 2006.
Human rights groups said that settler aggression towards
Palestinians had risen since the Gaza War began in 2023 after the 7 October
Hamas attacks. UN figures suggested that more than 3,200 Palestinians had been
forcibly displaced by settler violence and restrictions since then.
November 21, 2025
U.N.
humanitarian office figures showed 2,920 Israeli settler attacks took place
between January and October that year.
Israel’s
government was dominated by far-right proponents of the settler movement
including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who formulated settlement policy,
and Cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversaw the nation’s police
force.
The security
cabinet meeting came shortly after Israeli settlers celebrated the creation of
a new, unauthorized settlement near Bethlehem.
Israel's Civil
Administration also recently announced plans to expropriate large swaths of
Sebastia, major archaeological site in the West Bank. Peace Now, an
anti-settlement watchdog group, said, “the site is around 450 acres— Israel’s
largest seizure of archaeologically important land.”
Singapore said
Friday it would impose targeted financial sanctions and entry bans on four
Israeli individuals for what it said was their involvement in violence against
Palestinians in the West Bank. Singapore's Foreign Ministry named the
individuals as Meir Ettinger, Elisha Yared, Ben-Zion Gspstein and Baruch
Marzel. Some were currently under international sanction by the European Union,
the U.K. and other countries.
In a statement,
Singapore's Foreign Ministry said the settlers had been involved in “egregious
acts of extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank” and urged the
Israeli government to stop the violence and hold the perpetrators accountable.
December 4, 2025
The IDF and border police responded to a report of masked
Israeli settlers throwing rocks at Palestinian cars and burning tires near the
Shilo junction. The IDF and the Israel Border Police responded to several
incidents of settler violence in the West Bank near the Shilo junction on
Thursday, the military announced. On Thursday afternoon, the IDF and Border
Police responded to a report of masked Israeli settlers throwing rocks at
Palestinian cars and burning tires along Highway 60 after an Israeli outpost in
the area was evacuated. Several Palestinians were injured as a result, and one
vehicle was damaged.
Later, firefighters responded to reports of Israeli
civilians who set a Palestinian's car on fire and then assaulted the passengers
in the vehicle.
The IDF mentioned that it was aware of one Palestinian woman
who escaped the vehicle, suffered from smoke inhalation, and was treated by the
Red Crescent near the community of Eli.
As relentless
harassment from Israeli settlers drove his brothers from their Bedouin
community in the central occupied West Bank, Ahmed Kaabneh remained determined
to stay on the land his family had lived on for generations. But when a handful
of young settlers constructed a shack around 100 meters above his home and
started intimidating his children, 45-year-old Kaabneh said he had no choice
but to flee too. As with scores of Bedouin communities across the West Bank,
the small cluster of wood and metal houses where Kaabneh's father and
grandfather had lived were now empty.
"It is
very difficult, because you leave an area where you lived for 45 years. Not a
day or two or three, but nearly a lifetime," Kaabneh told AFP at his
family's new makeshift house in the rocky hills north of Jericho.
"But what
can you do? They are the strong ones and we are the weak, and we have no
power."
Some 3,200
Palestinians from dozens of Bedouin and herding communities had been forced
from their homes by settler violence and movement restrictions since October
2023, the UN's humanitarian agency OCHA reported in October. The United Nations
said that October was the worst month for settler violence since it began
recording incidents in 2006. Almost none of the perpetrators had been held to
account by the Israeli authorities. Alongside surging violence, the number of
settler outposts had exploded in the West Bank.
While all
Israeli settlements were illegal under international law, outposts were also
prohibited under Israeli law. But many ended up being legalized by the Israeli
authorities.
AFP had visited
Kaabneh in the al-Hathrura area weeks before he was forced to flee. On the dirt
road to his family's compound, caravans and an Israeli flag atop a hill marked
an outpost established earlier that year—one of several that had sprung up in
the area. On the other side of the track, in the valley, lay the wreckage of
another Bedouin compound whose residents had recently fled. While, in Kaabneh's
cluster of homes, AFP witnessed two settlers driving to the top of a hill to
surveil the Bedouins below.
"The
situation is terrifying," Kaabneh said at the time, “with life becoming
almost untenable because of daily harassment and shrinking grazing land.”
Less than three
weeks later, the homes were deserted. Kaabneh said, “the settlers would shout
all night, throw stones, and walk through the middle of the houses. They didn't
allow us to sleep at night, nor move freely during the day."
These days,
only activists and the odd cats wandered the remnants of Kaabneh's former life,
where upturned children's bikes and discarded shoes revealed the chaotic
departure.
"We are
here to keep an eye on the property, because a lot of places that are abandoned
are usually looted by the settlements," said Sahar Kan-Tor, 29, an Israeli
activist with the Israeli-Palestinian grassroots group Standing Together.
Meanwhile,
settlers with a quadbike and digger were busy dismantling their hilltop shack
and replacing it with a sofa and table.
"They
thrive on chaos," Kan-Tor explained. "It is, in a way, a land without
laws. There are authorities roaming around, but nothing is enforced, or very
rarely enforced."
A report by
Israeli settlement watchdogs last December said settlers had used shepherding
outposts to seize 14 percent of the West Bank in recent years.
NGOs Peace Now
and Kerem Navot said settlers were acting "with the backing of the Israeli
government and military". Some members of Israel's right-wing government were
settlers themselves, and far-right ministers had called for the West Bank's
annexation.
Kan-Tor said he
believed settlers were targeting this stretch of the West Bank because of its
significance for a contiguous Palestinian state.
But Kaabneh
said the threat of attacks loomed even in his new location in the east of the
territory. He said settlers had already driven along the track leading to his
family's homes and watched them from the hill above.
"Even this
area, which should be considered safe, is not truly safe," Kaabneh
lamented. "They pursue us everywhere."
December 10,
2025
A young
Palestinian man had died while being held in captivity by Israeli authorities,
according to the Palestinian Authority, as Israeli military and settler
violence across the occupied West Bank reached levels unseen in decades,
and its genocidal war on Gaza continued unabated.
Abdul Rahman
al-Sabateen, 21, from Husan near Bethlehem, died at a Jerusalem medical
facility on Tuesday night after being arrested by Israeli soldiers in late
June, the PA said in a statement.
His family
reported seeing no signs of illness when they last visited him during a court
appearance on November 25.
The death came
as Israeli forces arrested more than 100 Palestinians in dawn raids across the
West Bank on Wednesday, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office said.
The sweeps
targeted cities including Nablus, where approximately 30 people were detained,
and Silwad, where another 24 were taken into custody. Witnesses told the Wafa
news agency that soldiers entered homes, confiscating belongings and jewelry
during the operations.
Al-Sabateen’s
death brought to at least 94 the number of Palestinians who had died in Israeli
detention since October 2023, according to Physicians for Human Rights –
Israel, which had documented what it described as “systematic torture” in both
military and prison facilities.
The organization’s
recent report detailed cases involving beatings, medical neglect and deliberate
starvation. The United Nations human rights office had separately confirmed at
least 75 deaths during the same period, saying that Israeli authorities had
“deliberately imposed conditions of detention that amount to torture or other
forms of ill-treatment”.
Israeli forces
had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start
of the war in Gaza, while settler attacks, often with the military’s backing,
had surged dramatically and with impunity.
More than
700 Palestinians had been injured by Israeli settlers so far this year, double
the total for all of 2024, according to UN data. October alone saw 264 such
attacks, the highest monthly figure since tracking began in 2006.
The violence had coincided with an aggressive illegal
settlement expansion drive. On Wednesday, Israeli authorities approved 764 new
housing units in three West Bank settlements, a move Finance Minister Bezalel
Smotrich – who openly rejected a two-state solution – described as a
continuation of “the revolution”.
A psychologist
working with Doctors Without Borders and speaking anonymously in Hebron
described the mounting psychological toll on Palestinians on Wednesday, saying,
“they are preparing themselves for loss rather than planning for the future.”
The mental
health worker said patients commonly expressed the thought: “They started in
Gaza, then moved to the north of the West Bank – now it’s just a matter of time
until it’s our turn.”
The Wafa news
agency reported that around 190 settlers, accompanied by Israeli forces,
forcefully entered the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem
on Wednesday, part of a pattern of increasingly frequent incursions in recent
months, some of which far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar
Ben-Gvir had personally joined.
Under a
decades-old status-quo arrangement, only Muslims were permitted to worship at
the site, while Jews—who refer to the complex as the Temple Mount—were allowed
to visit but not pray.
December 12,
2025
As a scholar
who had studied Israeli extremist groups for over two decades said, “I
contend that the dramatic escalation of settler violence in the West Bank
reveals a profound transformation within Israel’s state institutions. Rather than serving as purported neutral
enforcers of law and order, the military, Israeli police and the broader
governmental apparatus have become increasingly aligned with — and at times
directly complicit in — violent settler actions against Palestinians.”
This
institutional reluctance to address settler violence, “is not merely a failure
of enforcement, I would argue, but a deliberate outcome of deep social,
political and cultural changes that have reshaped Israeli society since at
least the mid-1990s.”
Settlers’ Dream
Government
The most
visible manifestation of this transformation is the composition of Israeli’s
current government, formed in December 2022.
For the first
time, “key ministerial positions are held by individuals with explicit
pro-settler ideologies and personal ties to some of the most violent streams of
the settlement movement. Hence, it is not surprising that prominent figures
such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar
Ben-Gvir—both settlers with what has been described as extremist ideologies —
have actively implemented policies that facilitate and legitimize settler
violence.”
For instance,
Ben-Gvir had significantly eased firearm regulations, issuing over 100,000 new
gun licenses since October 2023, with settlers receiving preferential access.
Smotrich,
meanwhile, had publicly distributed security equipment to illegal outposts and
allocated substantial budgets for settler militias. This political backing fostered a climate in
which settlers felt emboldened to act with impunity.
Leila Molana-Allen:
Masked gangs of settlers
marauding through the streets armed with bats and Molotov cocktails, cars and
homes smashed apart and set on fire, this is now the daily reality for
Palestinians across the occupied West Bank. As the violence spreads, no one is
safe, a centuries-Old olive grove in ruins, flames licking at the stones of a
fifth century church.
Suleiman Khourieh, Mayor of
Taybeh, West Bank through translator: They attacked us, moved their sheep into
the churchyard, and they even tried to burn the church. There's no difference
between how the settlers treat Muslims or Christians.
Israel voted to extend
legal status to 19 previously illegal settlements, formalizing more control of
land in West Bank
“The gentleness of some is like
A polished shell with
silky feel
Lacking the precious
pearl within
Oblivious to the
brother’s weal
When you shall meet
one who is strong
And gentle too, pray
feast your eyes
For he is glorious to
behold
The blind can see his
qualities” Khalil Gibran
“Sing ye people—play for me—sing the songs ye were wont
to sing before your great Lord in Jerusalem” Adaption of Psalm 137 in Bible
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