[News] Settlers gunning for second Nakba in the West Bank

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/settlers-gunning-second-nakba-west-bank>
Settlers gunning for second Nakba in the West Bank

Tamara Nassar <https://electronicintifada.net/people/tamara-nassar> - 31
October 2023
------------------------------
[image: Silhouette of a man against a backdrop of smoke]

A Palestinian puts out a fire following a settler attack that killed three
Palestinians, and a fourth killed by a soldier, in Qusra, a village near
the northern West Bank city of Nablus, on 11 October.
ActiveStills

“You wanted war, so wait for the Great Nakba.”

This is what leaflets dispersed
<https://twitter.com/AJArabicnet/status/1717588964217962992> last week by
Jewish settlers in a northern occupied West Bank village read.

Israeli settlers are making good on their promise of another Nakba
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nakba> or catastrophe, when 800,000
Palestinians were expelled by Zionist militias or fled their towns and
villages in 1948, in a massive ethnic cleansing campaign to make way for
the nascent state of Israel.

Since 7 October, when Hamas delivered
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/hamas-has-upended-status-quo/39176>
Israel’s military and strategic establishment a bloody nose, prompting
Israel to launch a campaign of mass murder in Gaza, Israeli settlers have
been organizing attacks against Palestinian herding communities to drive
them off their land.

Israeli settlers and access restrictions enforced by Israeli occupation
military forces have driven nearly 800 Palestinians out of their homes and
communities since 7 October, according
<https://ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-22>
to UN monitoring group OCHA.

That’s almost 100 households in 15 different herding and Bedouin
communities.

Israeli settlers threaten Palestinians at gunpoint, vandalize their
property, hamper their access to water, ruin their trees, damage their
vehicles, steal their belongings and intimidate and physically attack them.

Settlers even hung dolls splattered with red
<https://twitter.com/AJArabic/status/1718311665245258105>, resembling blood
<https://twitter.com/SafaPs/status/1717860592055136610>, near a Palestinian
children’s school west of Jericho in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan
Valley, to intimidate and threaten them.

This forces Palestinian communities, which are comprised largely of
families and children, to leave their areas in fear of deadly attacks.

“Many more are in danger of being forced to flee in the coming days if
immediate action is not taken,” Israeli human rights groups said
<https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20231029_joint_emergency_call_to_the_international_community_stop_the_forcible_transfer_in_the_west_bank>
on Sunday, in a statement co-signed by more than 30 organizations.

They sounded the alarm over what they described as a “state-backed wave of
settler violence which has led, and is leading to, the forcible transfer of
Palestinian communities in the West Bank.”

The Israeli government actively supports settler attacks against
Palestinians and does nothing to stop them, the human rights groups said.

“Government ministers and other officials are backing the violence and in
many cases the military is present or even participates in the violence,
including in incidents where settlers have killed Palestinians,” the groups
added.

Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been distributing
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-22/ty-article/.premium/ben-gvir-and-his-wife-boast-of-arming-jewish-israelis/0000018b-5753-d473-a5fb-77db1c2d0000>
weapons to Israeli civilians, including those who live in Jewish-only
settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Settlers carried out nearly 170 attacks against Palestinians since 7
October, as per
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-23>
by OCHA. These figures include injuries against Palestinians as well as
property damage.

More than one-third of attacks involve settlers threatening Palestinians
with firearms, including shooting, OCHA said.

During half of these attacks, Israeli occupation forces escorted settlers
or actively participated in attacks.

“This is how the state exploits the fighting in Gaza to promote forcible
transfer in the West Bank,” B’Tselem said
<https://twitter.com/btselem/status/1718648463024439704> in the context of
one incident.

At least seven Palestinians were killed by settlers, who have been deputized
by Israel’s top leadership to carry out pogroms
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/jewish-extremists-plan-lynch-palestinians-chat-apps>
.
The South Hebron Hills

A big focus of forcible displacement has been the herding communities in
the South Hebron Hills.

Nearly 4,000 Palestinians live in farming and herding communities in the
South Hebron Hills, which lies
<https://www.btselem.org/topic/south_hebron_hills> in so-called Area C, the
60 percent of the West Bank that remains under full Israeli military
control and includes Israel’s largest settlements.

Israel enforces a near-total ban on Palestinian construction in Area C,
forcing Palestinians to build without permits and live in constant fear
that their homes would be demolished by Israeli bulldozers.

The Israeli army also employs what appears to be a policy of
“non-enforcement” against settler violence in those areas. Israeli settlers
are treated as civilians under Israeli law, while Palestinians are
subjugated to oppressive military rule.

Settlers also attack Palestinian communities with near-total impunity, and
often with the help and escort of occupation forces.

This is part of Israel’s relentless effort to change the demographics
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-rubberstamps-50-years-land-theft/30476>
in the area to ensure a Jewish majority. Israel, working hand in glove with
its settlers, push Palestinians off their land to establish facts on the
ground and ultimately annex those areas.
“Threatened at gunpoint”

On Saturday evening, settlers threatened Palestinian families in the
community of Khirbet Tuba, which lies about two kilometers from the village
of al-Tuwani in Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills.

Settlers stormed the home of a Palestinian family, trashed their belongings
and ordered them to leave. Settlers threatened a 15-year-old boy at
gunpoint when he tried to document the attack.

They then returned masked at dawn, stole the boy’s phone and the family’s
sheep, and damaged a water pipe belonging to them.
Over the weekend, more than 250 Palestinians living in Khirbet Zanuta, a
dwelling south of Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, have reportedly
<https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/138740> been forcibly displaced
after repeated attacks, harassment and threats by Israeli settlers. An
attack by armed settlers forced a family of 16 to leave another community
in the southern Hebron Hills on 21 October. Settlers vandalized a
residential structure, animal shelter and solar panel belonging to the
family in Khirbet al-Ratheem.

“We were threatened at gunpoint after they vandalized our properties,” Abu
Safi, a 76-year-old family member, told OCHA.

“Leaving was the only option for me to protect my family.”
In one incident settlers were dressed in the clothing of Israeli army
reservists and shot live ammunition at Palestinians: The Israeli human
rights groups said that there had been multiple incidents where settlers
attacked Palestinian communities “while wearing military uniform and using
government-issued weapons.” On 9 October, Israeli settlers threatened
Palestinians in the community of al-Ganoub in southern Hebron “that they
would be killed if they did not leave within an hour,” according to OCHA.

Israeli settlers set fire to two residential structures with all the
families’ belongings inside and stole their livestock. Five households,
made up of 40 Palestinians, were forced to leave their homes.

“My tent and my goats were what kept me here,” 75-year-old Abu Jamal from
the community told
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-21>
OCHA.

“After settlers set fire to our tent and stole my goats, they destroyed
everything that kept me here.”

On 12 October, armed settlers threatened a herding community in Nablus at
gunpoint, forcibly displacing more than 50 people.

Settlers threatened the community that their tents would be set on fire and
they would be killed. Abu Ismail, 52, told OCHA
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-22>
he “had no choice but to leave everything behind to protect my children.”

Armed settlers attacked, threatened and intimidated Palestinian residents
of Wadi al-Siq, a Bedouin community in the occupied West Bank, until they
left. After settlers expelled the community, they stormed the local school
and looted what was left behind.
More than 120 Palestinians have additionally been forcibly displaced in the
occupied West Bank after Israeli forces demolished their homes under the
guise of a lack of a building permit, or on punitive terms.

Under the policy of punitive demolitions, Israel destroys the family homes
of Palestinians who it accuses of carrying out attacks on Israelis. Entire
families are often left without shelter as a result of the policy, making
it a form of collective punishment.

The rise in settler violence comes as Israeli fire claimed the lives of at
least 115 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 7 October.

Thirty-six Palestinian children have been killed in the occupied West Bank
during that time, according
<https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_kill_16_year_old_palestinian_boy_with_drone_fired_missile_in_jenin>
to documentation collected by DCIP.
Olive harvest

With the annual olive harvest beginning in October, settlers have been
stealing olives and damaging <https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/137930>
trees across the occupied West Bank.

Settlers also attacked
<https://twitter.com/qudsn/status/1717926978051826087> Palestinian farmers
trying to harvest their olives.

“Palestinian farmers are particularly vulnerable at this time, during the
annual olive harvest season, because if they are unable to pick their
olives they will lose a year’s income,” according to the Israeli human
rights groups cited above.

Settler attacks have become a predictable part of the olive harvest season,
and a serious threat to Palestinian lives and livelihoods.

On Saturday, Jewish settlers shot and killed
<https://apnews.com/article/israel-settler-violence-palestinian-sawiya-west-bank-c3233164162d4c6511008da638474d99#:~:text=Tayseer%20Mahmoud%20said%20his%20nephew,in%20the%20chest%2C%20Mahmoud%20said.>
a Palestinian farmer as he was harvesting olives on his land in the
al-Sawiya town in the northern occupied West Bank south of Nablus.
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