‘I’m under siege’: The families fighting for their homes on the West Bank

Ramallah: The settlers stormed into town as the sun began setting. Dozens of men, their faces hidden by black masks. Spray-painting graffiti, torching cars and hurling rocks through windows as they rampaged through Kafr Malik, a Palestinian village 17 kilometres north-east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, last Wednesday. When visiting the town this week, we see burnt-out vehicles, damaged homes and bullets strewn across the ground. We meet Hamde Hamayel, 27, as a doctor treats his bloodied wounds; he was shot in the leg by Israeli soldiers after rushing to defend the town from attack. And we stand where a firebomb flew into a nearby family home, landing next to a crib while a young mother breastfed her 20-day-old daughter.

The mother and baby survived, but not everyone was so lucky. Three young Palestinian men died after being shot by the Israeli military, which stated that Palestinians opened fire on them after arriving at the scene. Locals vehemently deny that any Palestinians used firearms during the attack, and no evidence has emerged to support the military’s claims. Five Israeli settlers were taken for questioning, then quickly released without charge. What triggered their rampage through Kafr Malik is unclear.

What is obvious almost immediately after our arrival in the West Bank is that settler violence here has surged from already alarmingly high levels. According to the United Nations, 95 Palestinians in the West Bank were injured by Israeli settlers in June, the highest in two decades. The previous peak came during our most recent visit, in October 2023, when tensions flared following Hamas’s shock attacks that killed 1200 people. While the war between Israel and Iran ended after 12 days and hopes are growing of an imminent ceasefire in Gaza, tensions in this fiercely contested territory are only growing more intense. The Israeli government uses the biblical name of Judea and Samaria to refer to the region, which it seized during the 1967 Six-Day War with neighbouring Arab nations. Around 2.8 million Palestinians and 500,000 Israelis live in the territory, which sits outside Israel’s internationally recognised borders.

Traversing the West Bank’s rugged mountains, the challenge is not finding recent victims of settler violence willing to tell their story. It is squeezing in time to meet them while navigating the maze of Israeli-controlled checkpoints and iron gates that make it difficult, and at times impossible, to travel between Palestinian cities and villages. From Kfar Malik we travel south to Masafer Yatta, a collection of villages that was the subject of this year’s Academy Award-winning documentary, No Other Land. Many villagers here still live a traditional agrarian life revolving around olive harvesting, and sheep and goat herding. Hundreds also dwell in caves, a traditional practice that has taken on new meaning more recently as a way to escape attacks by Israeli settlers. Among them are the family of Saeed Rabaa, a Palestinian farmer who looks older than his 60 years.

Now living in a converted cave on his land, Saeed Rabaa had his leg amputated after being attacked by settlers in the village of Tawani in the West Bank. Credit: Kate Geraghty

As his son pours Arabic coffee into thimble-sized cups, Rabaa tells how he woke up late one night in April to hear settlers trying to destroy the olive trees outside his home. When he and his sons tried to defend his property, he says the settlers started choking him. He says Israeli security forces then arrived at the scene. Instead of targeting the settlers, they shot him in the leg; after a long wait to be taken to the hospital, his leg had to be amputated. Looking at the Israeli settlements and outposts surrounding the home his family has lived in for generations, he says: “They are taking our land and putting their flag on it.”

The UN is now recording an average of four settler-related incidents a day, up from one a day in 2021 and three a day in 2023. Regavim, a pro-settler organisation, argued in a recent report that such figures are inflated, and that settler violence is a “marginal phenomenon that does not reflect the silent majority of settlers”. The group points out that Israelis also face threats from Palestinians in the West Bank, which is true. In April, a Palestinian shot dead a pregnant Israeli settler who was driving to give birth; Israeli settlers waiting at bus stops have been targeted in ramming attacks by Palestinian drivers.

The scale of the threat is not equal, however. Unlike Palestinians, Israeli settlers are allowed to carry firearms and can usually rely on the Israeli military to defend them from attack. Since the beginning of 2023, 1122 Palestinians have died in confrontations with Israeli police or settlers, compared to 79 Israelis who have died in confrontations with Palestinians.

While international condemnation of the phenomenon has been growing, the issue receives strikingly little public attention in Israel. Even left-wing Israelis have been far more focused on securing the release of remaining Israeli hostages from Gaza rather than the explosion of settler violence in the West Bank.

That changed two days after the rampage in Kafr Malik, when Israeli settlers targeted their nation’s own army, apparently angered by the arrests of settlers and efforts to remove some unauthorised settler outposts. They set fire to a military base near Kafr Malik, vandalising military vehicles, spraying graffiti as they threw stones and choked soldiers. The attacks crossed a red line for the vast majority of Israelis, prompting the question: how did some radical settlers become so emboldened that they believe they can attack Israeli soldiers, as well as Palestinian villagers, with seeming impunity? The protests are widely believed to be linked to the Hilltop Youth, a far-right organisation that the then-head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency last year described as a “large stain on Judaism”.

“If these incidents aren’t addressed now, they will spread,” Israel Defence Forces chief of staff Eyal Zamir said. “Disaster lies ahead, and that’s why, alongside the security forces, a systemic and immediate response is needed.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to prosecute the rioters, saying: “No civilised country can tolerate violent and anarchic acts such as the burning of a military installation, damage to IDF property, and assaults on security personnel by citizens of the state.” Netanyahu went on to insist he would “not allow a violent and fanatic few to tarnish an entire community”, describing the Israeli settler community in the West Bank as “a model and an example of developing the land, meaningful service in the IDF, and contributing to the cultivation of Torah scholars”.

Yair Golan, the leader of the progressive Democrats party, countered that violent Jewish extremism could not be dismissed as a “fringe phenomenon” but rather a “dangerous current that has taken a deep hold, even around the government’s table”. Golan was referring to two far-right ministers who prop up Netanyahu’s coalition: Itamar Ben-Gvir and Belazel Smotrich. Both were sanctioned by Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway last month for inciting violence against Palestinians. Loathed by centrist and left-leaning Israelis, they hold 17 per cent of seats in the Israeli parliament but command enormous influence because of their ability to collapse Netanyahu’s government and force him to hold new elections.

A new Israeli settler outpost on the outskirts of the Masafer Yatta village of Tawani.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Ben-Gvir, who was exempted from Israeli military service in his youth because of his extreme religious nationalist views, is the minister for national security. This gives him control over the Israeli police, which exerts authority across most of the West Bank. The head of the police investigations unit in the West Bank was last year suspended and placed under a criminal investigation for allegedly failing to take action against Jewish extremists in the hopes of scoring a promotion from Ben-Gvir, who lives in a West Bank settlement. Smotrich, the finance minister and a prominent settler leader, has vast administrative authority over the West Bank and in May approved 22 new settlements, the biggest expansion in decades.

While some settlers are simply looking for cheap housing, others see it as part of an ideological and religious project to assert Jewish sovereignty over what they call “Greater Israel”, an area including the entire West Bank and Gaza. Australia and most countries officially oppose the settlements on the basis that they are illegal under international law and will make it harder, and perhaps impossible, to establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Such lofty geopolitical concerns are far from Ayman Soufan’s mind as he looks out the window of his home on the outskirts of Burin, a town near Nablus in the north of the West Bank. According to the region’s governor, Ghassan Daghlas, nowhere else in the West Bank is experiencing so many settler attacks.

Two weeks ago, Soufan discovered that Israeli settlers set up a tent just a few hundred metres from his home. As is common with such outposts – which are unauthorised under Israeli law – the makeshift structure sits on a hilltop, allowing the settlers to look down at the home the butcher lives in with his wife, children and brother’s family. Life was already tough enough here because of the aggressive presence of the nearby Yitzhar settlement, regarded as one of the most radical in the West Bank. The Biden administration last year sanctioned Yitzhar’s security co-ordinator for attacking Palestinians and trying to drive them off their lands.

“I feel like I’m under siege,” Soufan says as the settlers’ tarp flutters in the breeze behind him. “They have a goal: to force us out and take our homes.” The windshield of his car is shattered after being pelted with stones just a few days earlier. This is just one of many examples of harassment he says he has suffered from his hostile neighbours. He says settlers regularly attack his children with stones as they walk to school, and fly drones over his home to track his family’s movements. They have thrown red paint on his exterior walls and plastered his front doors with stickers saying “no future for Palestinians”. The settlers regularly come to his home and curse the Prophet Muhammad to antagonise him, he adds.

Ayman Soufan looks out at a settler outpost from his home in Burin. He and his brother take it in turns to watch for settler attacks. Credit: Kate Geraghty

In many ways, his home now resembles a prison. Barbed wire surrounds the property, which is guarded by a barking Belgian Malinois, a breed typically used for police dogs. Each night, he and his brother operate in shifts, taking turns to stay awake to keep watch over the house. Yawning, he says he can’t remember the last time he had a good sleep. He says the settlers often wear military uniforms, making it difficult to tell them apart from soldiers. “The IDF are letting them do what they like,” he says. For now, the teenage settlers camping out opposite his home are unarmed, but soon they could have guns. Over time, they could also convert the tent into a more permanent structure. Several outposts that began as tents and caravans have been retrospectively approved by the Israeli government and grown into large, densely populated settlements.

On the hilltop, a teenage settler flashes a peace sign. For Soufan and his family, who are battling to stay in their home, peace feels like nothing more than a mirage.

Continuing south in the Nablus region, we meet Maher Ebder, who walks gingerly on crutches and has a bandage on his face. As the 58-year-old talks, he winces in pain. He says that two days earlier, settlers attacked him while he was visiting his beloved family olive groves, hitting his face and legs with sticks. All he could make out on their balaclava-clad faces were their eyes. This followed an attack in which settlers destroyed hundreds of his olive trees – a common target for attacks because they are both a crucial source of livelihood and a symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

Dr Khalel Safady treats Hamde Hamayel, who was shot in the leg during a settler rampage in Kafr Malik on June 25. Credit: Kate Geraghty

“We were happy, we were living in peace,” he says of life before the settlements began appearing in the 1980s. “They steal our sheep, our vehicles, our land.” Referring to Beita’s reputation as a site of fierce resistance to Israeli settlements, he says: “Other towns need to defend themselves like us.”

In 2021, Beita’s residents attracted attention for using laser pointers, burning tyres, and noisy horns to torment settlers living in Evyatar, an outpost next to their village. More controversially, some protesters also burnt a giant Star of David with a swastika inside to compare the settlers to Nazis. The town’s residents have formed their own version of an emergency response unit, using the messaging app Telegram to communicate with each other and rush to the scene when settlers enter the area. “We were raised to defend ourselves, not to run away,” says Mohamad Maale, 37, whose leg was shot in a clash with settlers in Beita’s olive groves last week. He says he will teach his one-year-old son Ali to resist any encroachment on their land, just as his father taught him.

Time and again, we hear a common refrain from the Palestinian villagers we meet: as bad as things are, they refuse to give up the fight. “I will go back,” Maher Ebder says of his family olive groves, where he was recently beaten with sticks. “It’s my land.”

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