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Duma, occupied West Bank – Since Israel and the United States began their war on Iran last week, retaliatory missiles fired at Israeli targets have been flying through the skies over the occupied West Bank.
But it has been Israeli settlers on the ground who have been terrorising Palestinians in their small hamlets across rural areas of the West Bank more than the Iranian missiles or the Israeli interceptors trying to shoot them down.
Thus, when debris from one missile crashed about 20 metres (22 yards) from the century-old Mosallam family home in the northern West Bank village of Duma earlier this week, Thabet remained unfazed by the threat.
“We have the rockets in the sky, but the [Israeli] settlers are at our door,” the 24-year-old said. “Of course, the settlers and the army, they are the ones who pose a danger to us. They are what we are afraid of right now.”
‘The army closes the gate, and the settler comes and stands there’
While Israeli settlements, built on lands occupied in the 1967 war in violation of international law, are equipped with sirens and bomb shelters, adjacent Palestinian communities in the West Bank are afforded no such protections. Under international law, Israel, as the occupying power, is obligated to provide for the protection of the population under its occupation.
Instead, since the war against Iran broke out on Saturday, Palestinians in the rural West Bank find themselves penned in as settlers roam free. Israeli authorities have distributed leaflets to rural communities banning movement between West Bank governorates, proclaiming “terrorism and terrorists bring only death, destruction and devastation.”
Following similar lockdowns after the previous war on Iran in June and the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, Israeli authorities have closed existing gates at village entrances and this time have installed new ones to cut off movement between villages.
Closed gate at entrance into Duma-1772695826Meanwhile, Israeli settler chat groups have stepped up incitement towards loftier aims in recent days. “Don’t miss the opportunity,” encouraged one such post. “It’s time to beat the enemy and expel him from the country.”
Among a myriad of Israeli settler attacks in recent days, two Palestinian brothers were killed on Monday by a gang of settlers in Qaryut, 4km (2.5 miles) west of Duma, where they were videotaped shooting live fire at Palestinian homes.
Several Bedouin communities, including those violently displaced from Khirbet Ein ar-Rashash after the October 2023 attacks, live near the Mosallam family in what they described as a spiraling crisis.
“No one is allowed to go in or out, and the people here are without food or drink,” said a 35-year-old man who identified himself as a representative of one such hamlet. “From the day the war [on Iran] started, … no one can go to the doctor, no one can go to the hospital, no one can get bread, no one can eat.”
Similar shortages are crippling communities across the West Bank with movement so restricted that even humanitarian groups are unable to reach them. “The army closes the gate, and the settler comes and stands there,” said Muhammad, a neighbor of the Mosallam’s who declined to give his family team due to security worries, explained.
These settlers threaten people “with weapons, with intimidation, with beatings and sticks”.
“Every day, they beat young children, they scare people, they terrorise them,” the 35-year-old man said. “‘Forbidden! Go home! Forbidden to leave your house! Forbidden! Forbidden! Forbidden!’ Everything is forbidden.”
‘Like an orgy of violence’
With increasing collaboration with the military, the settlers haven’t simply penned in these isolated communities. They are also attacking them. According to witnesses, several Israeli settlers on Sunday entered Muhammad’s community and assaulted a 70-year-old man. When some Palestinians physically resisted, giving one of the perpetrators a bloody lip, a settler fired two live bullets into the air.
What followed was a violent rampage by the Israeli settlers that unfolded over several hours, witnesses said, continuing even after soldiers arrived. Joined by a few additional armed settlers, the group marauded through the community, repeatedly kicking, beating and pepper-spraying residents. One settler emptied out the community’s water tanks.
Palestinian men sustained head injuries from beatings. In one instance, a settler pepper-sprayed a room where an elderly woman with a heart condition was sheltering. Settlers smashed cars and vandalised other property.
“I’ve never seen [the settlers] like that,” said Yael Rosmarin, a teenage Israeli solidarity activist who was also pepper-sprayed during the rampage along with several other activists.
As Yotam, another Israeli activist assaulted several times that day, said: “It was like an orgy of violence.”
Witnesses said that when soldiers arrived, they stood by as the violence persisted – testimony that is backed up by video evidence.
Adele Shoko, another Israeli activist who was pepper-sprayed, said she saw a soldier “aiming and shooting, … firing directly at Palestinians”.
“The army was protecting them, so they could go and break things and attack people,” Muhammad said.
Soldier pointing gun at Palestinians during Sunday attack [Courtesy of Herd of Justice]The activists and Palestinian witnesses said settlers continued to deploy pepper spray in people’s faces even in the presence of the army. “They sprayed pepper spray in my eyes more than once and on my elderly mother and on the elderly women and on the children,” Muhammad said.
The settlers also tried to steal the villager’s goats but were prevented by the solidarity activists.
Soldiers later detained four people, including a 14-year-old boy and Shoko, under what video footage indicated and witnesses said were direct instructions from a right-wing Israeli influencer identified as Benyahu Ben Shabbat.
Muhammad said one soldier told him to “Go to Jordan” and “This is Israeli land! This army is here to protect the settlers. This is government policy.”
Allegra Pacheco, head of the West Bank Protection Consortium, a partnership among several leading international NGOs and 14 Western donor countries, noted that the attacks on Palestinian communities have a pattern. “What we see is that during the attacks when Palestinians are defending their families and property in a self-defence mode, the Palestinians are arrested on the spot but no settlers are.”
This sentiment was echoed by Rosmarin, who confronted a soldier during the attack. “I asked one of the soldiers, ‘You saw [the settlers] hitting, and we have videos. Why aren’t you doing anything?’” she recounted.
“And he said, ‘because we’re here to protect the Jews from the Arabs’.”
‘We go to sleep talking about the settlers. We wake up talking about the settlers’
On Monday, a neighbouring Bedouin community led by Bassam Aarara, 35, experienced a similar assault. The community, composed of many women and children, has been continuously terrorised by settlers for the past eight months since a nearby outpost was erected. Settlers have repeatedly destroyed the community’s water pipes and electrical lines.
Hours after the attack on Muhammad’s community, settlers stormed the iron gate of Aarara’s community using vehicles supplied by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to rural outposts. The gate struck an 11-year-old boy in the hand when it swung open, injuring him.
Teenage settlers then returned the following day, stealing security cameras and televisions. When villagers arrived, the settlers struck Palestinians and solidarity activists with sticks and sprayed them with pepper spray. They split open the head of Aarara’s brother. When Mustafa Rizik’s nephew tried to film the scene, they attacked him, snatched the phone and fled in an all-terrain vehicle.
Bassam Aarara [Steven Davidson/Al Jazeera]“This attack was different because they beat the children,” Aarara said as members of the community tended their injuries. “We are scared for the children and also because they cut off our electricity.”
Amid daily invasions, Aarara tells the community’s children to stay calm when rockets fly overhead, calling it “thunder in the rain”, although acknowledging their tin shacks offer little protection from them.
But really for the families, “We go to sleep talking about the settlers. We wake up talking about the settlers,” Aarara said.
Aarara made the difficult decision to evacuate the women and children from the community after Monday’s attack.
“The rocket? One in a million [chance] it falls on you,” said Rizik, whom a settler had tried to club in the head during Monday’s attack. “But the settler? No, he is coming.”
‘A domino effect’ of displacement
As the regional war widens, Pacheco worries about a cascading wave of violence and forcible displacement in the West Bank.
“My biggest concern is that we reach a similar situation that we had in the beginning of the Gaza war … when the West Bank was under the radar,” Pacheco warned. “That’s when Israeli settlers escalated this extreme violence that led to a massive forced displacement then.”
Since the June war against Iran, conditions on the ground have worsened considerably. After the forcible displacement of the entire community of Ras Ein el-Auja, there has been a steady drip of violent displacement across the West Bank.
West Bank communities, including some in Area B, which is under shared Israeli and Palestinian control, and in Area A, which is under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, have been facing intensified settler attacks.
More than 4,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced across more than 80 Palestinian communities since the October 7, 2023, attacks, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“The relentless violent attacks on Palestinian families and communities, threatening their safety and security, coupled with the coercive restrictions affect Palestinian resilience,” Pacheco explained. “In many cases, when one community in a block leaves, it’s a domino effect because the communities also rely on each other for protection and support.”
Having fled Ein al-Rashash after his village’s ethnic cleansing in October 2023, Ra’id Zawahra’s modest tin shack is the only home remaining on top of a gorgeous mountain ridge near Duma overlooking the Jordan Valley.
Ra’id in front of his home [Steven Davidson/Al Jazeera]The fields surrounding the ridge are overgrown with wildflowers, strewn with random items from abandoned Palestinian homes that have been looted by settlers. The haunting landscape is as breathtaking as it is terrifying – a sinister emptiness punctuated only by roaming armed settlers dressed in black.
After sending his wife and infant child away for safety, Zawahra, 22, endured constant pepper spray attacks and night-time raids by settlers trying to tear down his home.
“They come with stones at night. They hit with slingshots. They try to enter the house. They break the walls. They try to open the door,” Zawahra said when he was still living in his lonely, battered home.
Although he rarely slept more than three consecutive hours, Zawahra was determined to stay. He believed he could hold out as long as the Israeli solidarity activists remained with him around the clock.
But after the mass settler violence this week, the Israeli military delivered a stunning blow on Tuesday evening: It declared the vast pastoral areas around Duma a closed military zone.
While theoretically it applied to everyone but military personnel and residents, including the hilltop youth in settler outposts that are technically illegal even under Israeli law, the order was directed solely at the Israeli solidarity activists, who were forced to leave the entire area.
For Zawahra, it meant he was left completely alone. Fearing for his life, Zawahra made the agonizing decision to abandon his home for the night.
Activists reported that shortly after they were forced out, military vehicles arrived to ensure the area was clear. Within the hour, settlers had descended upon Zawahra’s property. They attacked his solar panels, tore the walls of his home to the ground and destroyed many of his belongings.
With a key assist from the army, the settlers had finally brought the house down.
