With Israel and the rest of the world looking at Gaza, radical Jewish settlers are attacking Palestinians in the occupied territories of the West Bank. Since the Hamas massacre, reports indicate that hundreds of Palestinians have been pushed off their land.
By Thore Schröder and Lucas Barioulet (Photos) in the West Bank
01.11.2023
When Abu Bashar heard about the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, he was certain that it would also affect him in some way. Not directly, not immediately. But it was inevitable, he says.
And he was right. A few days later, armed Jewish settlers drove the 48-year-old Bedouin, whose given name is Abdulrahman Kaabani, along with his wife and seven children, off his land.
Until October 12, 40 families had lived in a collection of corrugated metal shacks on reddish-brown earth in the northeastern corner of the Palestinian Territories. The land slopes steeply down to the Jordan River in the valley below, where the terrain is crisscrossed by narrow wadis. It’s a beautiful, barren desert landscape that is bone dry aside from a few weeks each year. Life here has never been easy for those who call the place home.
The village had been under acute threat since February. Abu Bashar says that he and the other shepherds began having problems feeding their goats and sheep after radical Jewish settlers established an outpost nearby. They arrived here just a few weeks after the Israeli government named right-wing extremist settler Itamar Ben-Gvir national security minister.
For years, the Palestinian shepherds had been having difficulties feeding their herds. But after the settlers showed up, says Abu Bashar, they took the step of fencing off the springs. Israeli human rights activists confirm his account, sending photos of a spring surrounded by a barrier. They also say that they, too, have become the target of violence from radical settlers, reporting beatings and threats with firearms.
The view from Wadi al-Siq: It’s always been hard for residents to make a living here. Foto: Lucas Barioulet / DER SPIEGEL
Activist Guy Hirschfeld refers to Israel settlers as “Jewish terrorists.” Foto: Lucas Barioulet / DER SPIEGEL
And then came October 7, when Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,400 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians. The radical Islamists abducted another 240 Israelis and hauled them into the Gaza Strip as hostages. With Israel’s full attention on the victims of the Hamas atrocities and the military operation in Gaza, settlers embarked on achieving a long-cherished aim of theirs: They want to completely remove all Palestinians from certain parts of the West Bank, says Guy Hirschfeld of the anti-occupation Israeli organization Looking the Occupation in the Eye. He refers to the settlers as “Jewish terrorists.”
Through last Sunday, the human rights group Yesh Din had recorded 100 separate incidents in 62 different places. The group says that 114 Palestinians have been killed since October 7. Most of those were killed in Israeli military operations, they say, though six deaths came at the hands of settlers, who they claim have faced no legal consequences. According to the West Bank Protection Consortium, a coalition of NGOs and donor countries in addition to the European Union, hundreds of Palestinians have been driven off their land since October 7. The NGO B’Tselem has documented the displacement of at least eight entire communities.
The war against Hamas has given the settlers the opportunity to forge ahead with displacements and land-grabs, says Hirschfeld. Because of the widespread outrage with Palestinians now felt by Jewish Israelis – and because the world is distracted – the settlers, says Hirschfeld, now feel empowered. “They see it as an opportunity to bring their plan to a successful conclusion,” he says, adding that their aim is the definitive failure of the two-state solution. Hirschfeld isn’t alone with his concerns: On Sunday, 30 human rights organizations in Israel issued a joint statement calling on the international community to put a stop to “the state-backed wave of settler violence.”
The Threat of “Nakba”
In Salfit, a town near Nablus, Palestinians were threatened with a “great Nakba” (“catastrophe”) in flyers distributed in Arabic – language similar to that heard from some right-wing Israeli politicians since October 7. The authors of the flyer deliberately chose the word “Nakba” in reference to the expulsion and flight of Palestinians in 1948 – and they explicitly threatened non-Jewish residents with violence: “This is your last chance to escape to Jordan. Afterward, we will destroy every enemy.”
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Israel’s Western partners, including Germany and the United States, continue to support the creation of an independent state for the Palestinians. On October 22, U.S. President Joe Biden concluded a post on X (formerly Twitter), in which he promised military support to the Israelis and aid deliveries to the people of Gaza, by writing: “We cannot give up on a two-state solution.” Last Wednesday, he clearly condemned the violence in the West Bank, saying that settlers were pouring gasoline on the fire in the Middle East. “It has to stop now,” he said.
In the Oslo Accords from the 1990s, the Palestinian Territories were divided into three areas. In Area A, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has far-reaching autonomy. In Area B, the Israelis are in charge of security. In Area C, the largest of the three areas, Israel is in charge of both security and civil administration – and it is also the area where the greatest number of Jewish settlements have been built. Those settlements have been found to be in violation of international law by the International Court of Justice and by the United Nations. Even as the Oslo process ultimately bogged down and peace receded into the distance, the official arrangement remains valid today. But the violence perpetrated by radical settlers has exploded.
“If You Come Back, You’re Dead”
The shepherd Abu Bashar remembers the day well when the settlers drove him and his family from their land. In the middle of the day on October 12, five days after the Hamas attack, several SUVs drove into Wadi al-Siq. Previously, he says, the settlers had always worn civilian clothing, but this time, they were in uniform and accompanied by soldiers. Some of the men had covered their faces. Israeli police, Abu Bashar says, watched the unfolding operation, but did nothing. “The settlers and the soldiers pointed their weapons at us and demanded that we leave within an hour,” says Abu Bashar.
A photo in a newspaper of handcuffed Palestinians next to the place in Wadi al-Siq where the photo was taken Foto: Lucas Barioulet / DER SPIEGEL
A rooster stuck in a fence in Wadi al-Siq Foto: Lucas Barioulet / DER SPIEGEL
The settlers and soldiers also demanded that he and his family flee to Jordan. “They fired several shots over our heads,” says Abu Bashar. DER SPIEGEL journalists met with Abu Bashar in an olive grove near the village of Taybeh, just a few kilometers from Wadi al-Siq. As he tells his story beneath one of the trees, he rolls olives from one hand to the other, his eyes staring emptily into the oblivion. A relative of his named Abu Hassan joins us, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. The Israelis, he says, divided women, children and men into two groups and confiscated their IDs and telephones. They tied up the men and pushed them to the ground, pushing their boots into the necks of the Palestinians. “If you come back, you’re dead,” they said, according to Abu Hassan.
Village residents ran for their lives, the two men say. Evidence of the panicked escape can still be seen in Wadi al-Siq: Schoolbooks, women’s shoes and framed suras from the Koran are strewn about on the ground. A rooster left behind in the rush, its feet tied together, has become stuck in a fence and is desperately flapping its wings.
“I’ve Lost Everything”
Abu Bashar says that his family is staying with relatives nearby for the time being, but the money he now earns as a seasonal farmworker isn’t enough to keep them afloat. Along with his village, he has also lost his livelihood: houses, stalls, clothes, furniture and the expensive feed for his sheep and goats. The village school, built in recent years with the help of money from the EU, was also destroyed.
He says he doesn’t dare return to Wadi al-Siq. The settlers, he says, threatened to shoot him if they saw him there again. “I’m 48 years old and I’ve lost everything: my land and my dignity,” says Abu Bashar.
A view of the EU-funded village school after Israeli settlers raided it Foto: Lucas Barioulet / DER SPIEGEL
Journalists from Haaretz and the Times of Israel conducted in-depth reporting into the day the Wadi al-Siq villagers were displaced, and they found that three Palestinians were abused even worse than Abu Bashar. The newspapers reported that settlers and soldiers bound the eyes of their victims and tied them up before beating them with the butts of their rifles and metal rods and kicking them. They extinguished their burning cigarettes on the men, according to the reports, and splashed them with water and urine. A photo of the mistreated men was posted in a right-wing extremist Facebook group before then being deleted.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military told Haaretz that the incident was under investigation and that the unit’s commander had been dismissed. But the spokesman added that the Palestinian men were under suspicion because they had been in possession of a knife and an ax. The men deny the allegations. For Abu Bashar, it sounds like an all-too-common excuse “to harass us.”
On the main road down into the Jordan Valley, half an hour away from Wadi al-Siq, the Israeli activist and former army officer Doron Meinrath is sitting on a plastic chair and watching over the residents of Mu’arrajat East. He says that two years ago, radical settlers had set up an outpost near this village as well – and then began terrorizing their Palestinian neighbors.
The Military-Settler Alliance
Meinrath is a 63-year-old from the city of Petah Tikva, located near Tel Aviv. For the last two years, he has been active with Looking the Occupation in the Eye, Guy Hirschfeld’s NGO. His father was born in the German city of Konstanz, he says, and emigrated to Palestine when the Nazis came to power. Meinrath served for 30 years in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), most recently as a colonel.
The Israeli volunteers come here every morning to accompany herders when they head out to graze their animals, or they just sit and wait to see if anything happens. They try to document attacks so they can later be prosecuted, or they attempt to keep the perpetrators from doing anything worse.
The arid landscape of the Jordan Valley, with an outpost right in the middle Foto: Lucas Barioulet / DER SPIEGEL
Armed men have begun showing up in the night as well, says Alia Mlihat, one of the village’s 300 residents. “They steal our livestock and batteries, and they threaten us with weapons. They want to scare us into leaving.”
“We’re Israelis ourselves,” says Meinrath. “The army listens to us at least a little bit.” And that is why he and other activists maintain a presence here.
Former soldier and activist Doron Meinrath: “The army listens to us at least a little bit.” Foto: Lucas Barioulet / DER SPIEGEL
Meinrath says he’s furious at the degree to which the military is allied with the settlers. In the last four years, he says, the bonds have grown even more pronounced.” Gadi Eizenkot was the last chief of the general staff who treated the Palestinians halfway decently, he says, but he stepped down in 2019. After that, Meinrath says, the settlers took complete command in the occupied territories.
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Israel, Middle East, Palestine