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Irish Times
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
‘Hanging on by a thread': Two days with activists protecting Palestinians from being forced off their land
As the sun sets, it coats the valley in gold, tinged with purple. A plane flies overhead – perhaps one of those that regularly takes off from a nearby Israeli military base – and the Palestinian boy points in the air, asking if it is a missile. A missile from Yemen will fly above later, in the early hours of the morning, setting off alarms in the nearby settlement. For the Palestinians there are no shelters, unless they count the traditional caves that families use as storage and, when necessary, stay in themselves. A husband, wife and two grandchildren live in this home. At 6am the boys wake up to graze the family's roughly 40 sheep. Their grandfather stands on a ledge, peering down at a settler walking through the Palestinian land below them. That same afternoon another settler will enter their property on a horse and just sit there – they believe to intimidate them – before leaving again. The Irish Times spent two days and nights this week in Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta, a collection of villages and hamlets in the occupied West Bank . Activists – both Israeli and international – provide 'protective presence' across this area, sleeping in the homes of Palestinians who are regularly harassed by Israeli settlers. The number of settlements around them is constantly increasing. READ MORE Many of the Palestinian families have a spare room always ready, with mattresses and blankets. The activists bring cameras, which they view as essential for documenting wrongdoing by settlers and soldiers. They also hope filming helps stop situations from escalating and becoming more violent. As a result, Palestinians here have years of evidence of being taunted, harassed, beaten and shot at; their olive trees, crops and property being damaged or destroyed. A sunflower at the home of a family in Khraibet el Nabi, where protective presence volunteers stayed the night. Photograph: Sally Hayden The occupied West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967, makes up a large portion of the territory that two-state solution advocates hoped would form any future Palestinian state alongside Israel. The settlements – considered illegal under international law – make that increasingly impossible. Many in Israel's far-right government are actively calling for imminent annexation, though there is no suggestion that Palestinians here would get equal rights as a result. Masafer Yatta is at the forefront of a campaign to hold on to Palestinian land. Its residents have become fluent in the language of Israeli legal challenges, permits and administrative hurdles, police departments and security forces designations, even if they believe these processes and systems were designed by an occupying force to work against them. They have been legally questioning the designation of the majority of Masafer Yatta's villages as a closed military zone since the 1980s . [ 'This is the homeland of Jesus': Palestinian Christians plead for end to attacks by West Bank settlers Opens in new window ] Many Jewish settlers claim they have a biblical right to the territory they call Judea and Samaria, with the number across East Jerusalem and the West Bank increasing from about 250,000 in the early 1990s to about 700,000 today – a figure that includes a significant number of Jewish immigrants born outside of Israel. Settlers place new outposts in strategic locations, aiming to force more Palestinians off their land and to eventually join with nearby settlements. Most are still in what is known as area C, which makes up the majority of the West Bank and is under full Israeli control. On Thursday Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar said he believes settlers are more 'exposed to terror and violence' than 'any other public in the world'. The death tolls tell a different story. Over the past decade at least 1,755 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank compared with at least 133 Israelis, UN figures show. The Palestinian death toll includes at least 52 women and 366 children, while the Israeli death toll includes 23 women and 11 children. A spokesperson from the Israeli government's Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat) referred The Irish Times to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) for comment on issues raised in this article. An IDF spokesperson said its forces operate in a 'complex security environment' in what it calls Judea and Samaria, facing 'terrorism and violent riots on a daily basis,' with security forces 'deployed… to ensure the safety of the area and its residents, as well as the security of the State of Israel and its citizens.' The spokesperson said 'enforcement actions against illegal construction are carried out in accordance with the law' and that the IDF 'acts decisively against violence. Any claim that the IDF supports or enables violence is false.' Former Israeli soldier Itamar Shapira now provides 'protective presence' to Palestinians in Masafer Yatta. Photograph: Sally Hayden Israeli Itamar Shapira (45) has been volunteering in Masafer Yatta for years. Shapira was a soldier in the West Bank during the second intifada, which began in 2000. This experience changed his outlook, he says. He realised that 'Palestinians are jailed inside the West Bank. They're not allowed, sometimes even, to leave their villages or cities, and they're under military rule and dictatorial rule. The only way to enforce such a law on people, a law that is not for them, is through collective punishments ... Over 80 per cent of the orders that we get have to do with just creating fear.' He says the fear has to be sustained. 'Sometimes, if the fear goes too low, they might rebel. So that's the idea basically ... making sure that people suffer in fear and never know what will happen to them at any given moment ... It's an existential situation of generations that live without knowing if tomorrow they could drink water, if tonight someone is going to enter their home and burn it while they're inside, if demolition orders will come.' The volunteers move in twos. 'If my presence helps in some way, then I'm going to do that,' says American academic Jonathan Krohn (30), who has paired with Shapira. [ Palestinians say Occupied Territories Bill would give them hope: 'We are really in a big cage' Opens in new window ] 'Somebody told me about the kind of work that was going on down here and the tradition of nonviolent resistance in Masafer Yatta,' Krohn says. 'Obviously, there's a long history of nonviolent resistance all over the world ... But in Masafer Yatta, in this digital age, it's kind of a new frontier.' The landscape has changed since they started this work: there are areas they can no longer go to. One is Khalet al-Daba'a, a nearby village that was largely demolished in early May. That was where Irishwoman Máire Ní Mhurchú , or 'D' Murphy (70), a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was detained on May 31st. Anyone else who goes there could be deported like her, activists warn. 'Regardless of whether there's a ceasefire in Gaza and this genocide is temporarily stopped, the ongoing ... ethnic cleansing in the West Bank goes on,' Krohn says. 'Villages are being wiped out. People are being dispossessed of their homes and their land. And it's an ongoing fight.' A Palestinian teenager herds his family's sheep in Khraibet el Nabi, in Masafer Yatta. Photograph: Sally Hayden Shapira first visits Musab Raba'i, who lives in At-Tuwani, around 30km southeast of Hebron city. Raba'i has been watching Israeli settlers construct what look like a guard post about 200m from his front door. 'I've been attacked for a long time but now they're closer. They can throw [things] from there to my home,' says the 37 year old. As he speaks, a settler drives by – Raba'i says sometimes the man shouts at his four children. A few days before more settlers tried to enter his garden with a flock of sheep, he says. Raba'i's village, and the broader area, was featured in the 2025 Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land . Activists still gather under the home of its co-director Basel Adra, who lives down the road. But Raba'i says any hope the Oscar win would make a difference faded quickly. 'On the ground nothing has changed,' he says. 'There's no safe place now.' A Palestinian child on a bicycle in the village of Umm al Khair, in front of a gate protecting the nearby Israeli settlement. Photograph: Sally Hayden The activists' next stop is the village of Umm Al Khair. English teacher and Palestinian activist Tariq Hathaleen (30) already felt like a 'refugee' because his family were displaced in the 1940s during the Arab-Israeli war. Palestinians refer to the displacement as the ' Nakba ', meaning 'catastrophe'. Hathaleen says his family bought the land they live on in the early 1960s. Among the 170 residents, 'we're one community, we're relatives, we're cousins. We stand together in everything'. An Israeli road was built in about 1980. It was followed by an army base that was later replaced with a settlement, and another settler outpost was replaced with concrete homes. 'It basically took half of our lands ... Life changed since then ... We had the first Nakba, and this is the second continuous Nakba since 1980 until today,' Hathaleen says. [ Sanctions against individual settlers are hopelessly inadequate. The real settler organisation is Israel Opens in new window ] As Hathaleen speaks, children cycle their bicycles on the road that bisects the village. They stop in front of a yellow gate – a settlement entrance – with an Israeli flag hanging on one side. While the Israeli flag is a regular sight in the West Bank, the Palestinian flag is almost impossible to spot – Palestinians say they face punishment if they display it. Human rights organisations say the conditions for Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories amount to apartheid . Israeli settlers live under civilian law, while Palestinians in the West Bank are dealt with under Israeli military law. 'All of my life, I was born and grow up with this scene of the settlement just a few metres away from my family house,' says Hathaleen. 'I can simply see how luxurious their life is. And we are banned from having any kind of basic human rights. We are not allowed to have electricity. We are not allowed to pave our roads. We are not allowed to have water. And they have a swimming pool, they have villas, they have electricity, security, everything they need, everything they dreamed for they get it ... That's apartheid ... The plan is, since day one, to kick us away from here.' Now settlers have a 'new technique' of shepherding and seizing grazing lands, Hathaleen says, while the villagers – who have about 200 animals left between them – have 'zero grazing areas'. Israel also stopped granting Palestinians permits to work in Israel, cutting off another economic source. 'Everyone is suffering here,' Hathaleen says. Alongside that, they face 'physical violence, there is verbal violence, and there is destruction of properties'. He says more than 90 buildings were demolished there over the past 18 years. He points to razor wire, saying settlers set it up and residents cannot cross it. He believes the settlers are trying to provoke residents to react so 'they can claim it's a security threat ... Imagine them cursing your mother, the most important person in your life ...' He trails off. Fences and barbed wire are regularly used to keep Palestinians away from Israeli settlements. Photograph: Sally Hayden Though Hathaleen can recall many tragedies, two stand out. About 25 years ago Hathaleen says his brother, Muhammad, was attacked by a security officer from a nearby settlement. Muhammad was left in a coma and when he woke it became clear that he had a mental disability that he still bears today. The incident was previously reported by international media. In January 2022 Hathaleen's septuagenarian uncle, Hajj Suleiman, went out to protest against Israeli confiscations of vehicles owned by the village residents. Hathaleen says an Israeli tow truck drove over his uncle, dragging his body along the road and causing wounds that eventually killed him. This incident was condemned by the UN agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa). A mural honouring Suleiman was painted in the community centre where we spoke. Imran Nawaja, known as Yousef, was attacked by settlers at home in Susya. Photograph: Sally Hayden Some 11km away, the Palestinian village of Susya has been deemed a closed military zone since early May. This is not unusual – by 2015 one third of the West Bank had been declared similarly closed, according to settlement watchdog Kerem Navot. But the new designation means activists could be arrested if they are caught inside, residents say. At night a police car – its sirens flashing – is posted in a road nearby, visible from homes. Imran Nawaja (49), known as Yousef, lives at a far end of the village: he uses torchlight to lead the way. Shapira and Krohn will sleep on the floor of his sittingroom inside and Nawaja will rest on the roof of an outhouse in the open air, alert to any noises. One of his two wives also sleeps outside, in a wagon filled with blankets and cushions, to keep watch. The truck where Imran Nawaja'a's wife sleeps at night to protect their animals from settlers. Photograph: Sally Hayden Nawaja was beaten up weeks before by settlers: he needed 12 stitches in his head as a result, he says. His blood is still visible, splattered on the stones. His other wife was later attacked: he takes out photographs of her in hospital and of her medical report, which confirm a 47-year-old was admitted to the emergency department on June 27th after being beaten, with a haemorrhage in her abdomen. Nawaja points to a tent in the distance – a new outpost. He says it houses 'hilltop youth' and claims it is where his attackers came from. Susya's residents previously lived on a nearby location. It was declared an archaeological site in the 1980s, because the remains of an ancient synagogue were discovered there, and they were forced to move. An Israeli settlement, known as Susiya, was established in the vicinity. How long this has been going on for becomes apparent again as Nawaja scrolls through his phone's photograph album, pulling up a picture of his aunt – who has since died – standing in front of an Israeli soldier who Nawaja says was barring her from ploughing her land years ago. Nawaja's love of his culture is also evident. He pulls up photographs of his mother wearing a thobe, or long tunic, decorated with embroidery known as tatreez. He has videos of her dancing decades ago, and of women joyously celebrating and ceremonially cooking in the run-up to his wedding. 'This is our heritage,' Nawaja says, smiling. Though his family is struggling financially, they serve the activists a meal of bread made with home-grown wheat, olives and olive oil from their trees, and milky tea made from their goats' milk, with Nawaja saying a key aspect of their culture is hospitality, along with helping each other. Dotted between the happy memories in his photo album are pictures of soldiers, settlers and more violence. Nawaja describes walking to school with other children and a donkey during the first intifada, or uprising, which began in 1987 and lasted for six years. 'We were afraid of the settlers and soldiers, everyone waits together and you go back together.' He left education after fifth grade, saying the journey became too difficult. In 2013 a school was finally built in Susya but it is now under an Israeli demolition order, like the rest of the village, Nawaja says. NGOs say 84 schools in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are subject to pending demolition orders. One, built using Irish Aid funds, was demolished in late 2023. Nawaja says he would welcome Ireland's proposed Occupied Territories Bill and 'every law that may help Palestinians'. The Bill would prohibit trade in goods with Israeli companies operating in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories , though there have been calls to include services in the scope of the Bill. 'We want to live like other people,' he says. 'This occupation isn't like other occupations, where [the occupiers] just exploit [people]. They actively want us to not be here. 'We will not leave this place. It was our fathers' fathers'. We are here legally and they are not ... They already took half of our land. Why don't they stay there and life will be beautiful.' Protective presence volunteers Itamar Shapira and Jonathan Krohn watching the sun set from a Palestinian home in Khraibet el Nabi. Photograph: Sally Hayden Reflecting on these comments later, Shapira, the activist, says it is clear Palestinian residents in Masafer Yatta are 'hanging on by a thread'. The only possibility for them to stay where they are is 'contact with people from the outside', Shapira suggests. He says he doesn't know if the Occupied Territories Bill would 'do anything or not – I suspect not'. He says: 'But what it does is maintain the contact. What's important is to maintain the contact, because without the outside contact, these villages are going to be razed in two weeks.'
The Guardian
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Palestinians fear razing of villages in West Bank, as settlers circle their homes
Ali Awad is tired. The 27-year-old resident of Tuba, one of the dozen or so villages that make up Masafer Yatta in the arid south Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank, had been up all night watching as a masked Israeli settler on horseback circled his family home. 'When we saw the masked settler, we knew he wanted violence,' said Awad, his eyes bloodshot. They were lucky this time: the settler disappeared into the darkness before police could show up. The men in Masafer Yatta rarely sleep these days. They take turns standing watch at night, fearful that nearby Israeli settlers will attack under the cover of darkness. Daylight brings little respite. Residents work with an ear pricked up for the sound of approaching vehicles, scanning the horizon for Israeli bulldozers which could signal their homes are next to be demolished. Israel designated Masafer Yatta a military training zone – named firing zone 918, where no civilians can live – in 1981. It has been working since to push out the roughly 1,200 residents who remain. These residents have been fighting in Israeli courts for more than two decades to stop their expulsion, a battle which has slowed, but not stopped, the demolition of Palestinian homes there. Recently, an Israeli administrative body issued a decision which legal experts and activists have said could remove the last remaining legal barriers for the demolition of homes in Masafer Yatta. The decision could lead to the forcible transfer of 1,200 people, something the UN warned could be a war crime. 'This would amount to forcible transfer, which is a war crime. It could also amount to a crime against humanity if committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack,' the UN human rights office said on 26 June. On 18 June, the civil administration's central planning bureau, the Israeli military agency that issues construction permits in occupied Palestinian territories, issued a directive that all pending building requests in Masafer Yatta be rejected. Previously, residents could file building planning requests and, while they were being examined, their structures could not legally be demolished. By cancelling all pending requests, the new directive dismisses all previously submitted cases without examining their particularities and gives demolitions the green light. The decision was made at the same time as Israeli authorities are pursuing sharply increased numbers of demolitions across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, destroying 933 structures since the beginning of the year, a record-breaking pace, according to UN data. As structures are demolished, more Palestinians are killed in the West Bank, with at least 950 killed and 9,000 injured by Israeli forces and settlers since the start of the war in Gaza on 7 October 2023, according to Palestinian health authorities. The new directive cites a military planning document issued a day earlier, which said that firing zone 918 was necessary for combat preparedness and that the presence of civilian structures prevented training exercises. The document says: 'The practical condition for such [military training] access is the removal of the unauthorised constructions, thus enabling the IDF to conduct its training … No construction in the firing zone can be permitted.' It adds that for live-fire exercises to be conducted, the area needs to be 'sterile'. According to a lawyer representing residents of Masafer Yatta, Netta Amar-Shiff, the new directive bypasses a previous legal ruling and abrogates local laws, and could rapidly expedite the destruction of villages. 'If this directive is activated, it means planning institutions can dismiss building requests under military auspices, so no civilian construction and development can be approved. It's easier for them to eliminate entire villages,' Amar-Shiff said. Humanitarian organisations have long accused Israel of establishing firing zones as an excuse to push Palestinians off their land and expand settlement construction. About 18% of Area C, the parts of the West Bank under full Israeli control, has been designated as firing zones. According to government meeting minutes in 1981, the then agriculture minister and future PM, Ariel Sharon, proposed the creation of firing zone 918 with the purpose of forcing Palestinians out of the area. In the meeting, Sharon told the IDF he wanted to expand shooting zones 'in order to keep these areas … in our hands', pointing to 'the expansion of the Arab villagers' in the area. In a comment, the Israeli military said the civil administration was 'holding ongoing discussions regarding villages built within the boundaries of firing zone 918' and that the military had a 'vital need for the area'. 'As a general rule, no approval will be granted for construction within the firing zone, which is designated as a closed military area,' the Israeli military said in a statement to the Guardian, adding that building permit requests were subject to approval by military command. To Awad, last week's decision is the latest attempt in a long line of court decisions and policies by the Israeli government to expel the residents of Masafer Yatta from their homes. In May 2022, Israel's high court ruled that the residents could be expelled and the land repurposed for military use, as it said villagers were not permanent residents of the area before the firing zone was declared. Residents and lawyers, relying on expert testimony and literature, said they had inhabited the area for decades. 'This decision was a clear way of cutting the last nerve of life that these people had,' said Awad, calling it part of a larger policy of 'ethnic cleansing of Palestinians'. Awad and the other residents of Masafer Yatta have spent more than two decades filing petitions, appeals, proposing master plans and submitting documents to try to fight the destruction of their community. 'We tried for many years to supply different documents and proofs and plans to the courts. But, after years of this, a commander in the army says no and that's enough,' said Nidal Younis, head of the Masafer Yatta council, in a press briefing late last month. As the residents navigate Israel's labyrinthine bureaucracy to stave off demolition orders, settlers have acted as the extrajudicial vanguard of displacement, making daily life nearly intolerable for Palestinians. Almost every single resident has a story about being harassed or attacked by nearby settlers, whose presence has been slowly growing, with new outposts popping up on the area's hilltops. In the early hours of 25 June, settlers set fire to Nasser Shreiteh's home in the town of Susiya, burning his kitchen and a bedroom almost entirely, running off as he tried to extinguish the fire. 'They want to evict everyone, they want everyone to disappear. But I am here, if they burn my house down, I will stay here, I have no other place to go,' said Shreiteh, a 50-year-old with seven children, as he overlooked the charred remains of his kitchen. As he spoke, an Israeli military patrol passed and behind it roared a beaten-up sedan driven by settlers, swerving in circles as the car's trunk swung open. They pulled up to Shreiteh's driveway and made an obscene hand gesture before driving off. Incidents of settler violence in the area have sharply increased since the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza. The rise of the far-right, extremist ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir has provided political cover, allowing settlers to act with virtual impunity. Many settlers have been called to military reserves, where they serve around their settlements. Residents of Masafer Yatta said settlers would often walk around in military dress, such as combat trousers, which made it impossible to tell whether they were dealing with settlers or soldiers. Settler violence has escalated the tighter residents have clung to their land. In late January, settlers torched Awad's car, which he had used to transport children to school and residents to legal hearings. Souad al-Mukhamari, a 61-year-old resident of Sfai, another village in Masafer Yatta, complained that one of her granddaughters, a child, had been beaten and pepper-sprayed by a settler a month earlier. Her own home overlooked the debris of a school that was demolished in 2022. Palestinians can do little to protect themselves from settler violence, and are severely punished if they attempt to do so. They complain that Israeli authorities fail to protect them and do not follow up on their complaints. Legal advocates have said they expect little protection from Israel's legal system, but instead are looking to the international community to increase pressure on Israel to halt settlement construction and protect the rights of Palestinians. 'We don't see any possibility of internal change within Israel to protect these communities,' said Sarit Michaeli, an international advocacy officer at the Israeli human rights group B'tselem. 'The only way to stop this is whether there is clear international action to clarify to Israeli policymakers that actions have consequences,' she added. The Trump administration has expressed little interest in addressing illegal settlement construction and violence, lifting Biden-era sanctions on settlers. Instead, Michaeli said the EU could play a role in pressuring Israeli officials, especially as it announced at the end of May that it is reviewing its association agreement with Israel over human rights compliance concerns. As residents of Masafer Yatta wait for international action, they live under the constant threat of displacement and settler violence, their means of resistance all stripped away one at a time. Still, they are determined to stay. 'Just mentally we are preparing for more demolitions. There's nothing more on the ground we can do, besides putting our words in the media so they can reach farther than we can scream,' Awad said.
The Guardian
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Palestinians fear razing of villages in West Bank, as settlers circle their homes
Ali Awad is tired. The 27-year-old resident of Tuba, one of the dozen or so villages that make up Masafer Yatta in the arid south Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank, had been up all night watching as a masked Israeli settler on horseback circled his family home. 'When we saw the masked settler, we knew he wanted violence,' said Awad, his eyes bloodshot. They were lucky this time: the settler disappeared into the darkness before police could show up. The men in Masafer Yatta rarely sleep these days. They take turns standing watch at night, fearful that nearby Israeli settlers will attack under the cover of darkness. Daylight brings little respite. Residents work with an ear pricked up for the sound of approaching vehicles, scanning the horizon for Israeli bulldozers which could signal their homes are next to be demolished. Israel designated Masafer Yatta a military training zone – named firing zone 918, where no civilians can live – in 1981. It has been working since to push out the roughly 1,200 residents who remain. These residents have been fighting in Israeli courts for more than two decades to stop their expulsion, a battle which has slowed, but not stopped, the demolition of Palestinian homes there. Recently, an Israeli administrative body issued a decision which legal experts and activists have said could remove the last remaining legal barriers for the demolition of homes in Masafer Yatta. The decision could lead to the forcible transfer of 1,200 people, something the UN warned could be a war crime. 'This would amount to forcible transfer, which is a war crime. It could also amount to a crime against humanity if committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack,' the UN human rights office said on 26 June. On 18 June, the civil administration's central planning bureau, the Israeli military agency that issues construction permits in occupied Palestinian territories, issued a directive that all pending building requests in Masafer Yatta be rejected. Previously, residents could file building planning requests and, while they were being examined, their structures could not legally be demolished. By cancelling all pending requests, the new directive dismisses all previously submitted cases without examining their particularities and gives demolitions the green light. The decision was made at the same time as Israeli authorities are pursuing sharply increased numbers of demolitions across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, destroying 933 structures since the beginning of the year, a record-breaking pace, according to UN data. As structures are demolished, more Palestinians are killed in the West Bank, with at least 950 killed and 9,000 injured by Israeli forces and settlers since the start of the war in Gaza on 7 October 2023, according to Palestinian health authorities. The new directive cites a military planning document issued a day earlier, which said that firing zone 918 was necessary for combat preparedness and that the presence of civilian structures prevented training exercises. The document says: 'The practical condition for such [military training] access is the removal of the unauthorised constructions, thus enabling the IDF to conduct its training … No construction in the firing zone can be permitted.' It adds that for live-fire exercises to be conducted, the area needs to be 'sterile'. According to a lawyer representing residents of Masafer Yatta, Netta Amar-Shiff, the new directive bypasses a previous legal ruling and abrogates local laws, and could rapidly expedite the destruction of villages. 'If this directive is activated, it means planning institutions can dismiss building requests under military auspices, so no civilian construction and development can be approved. It's easier for them to eliminate entire villages,' Amar-Shiff said. Humanitarian organisations have long accused Israel of establishing firing zones as an excuse to push Palestinians off their land and expand settlement construction. About 18% of Area C, the parts of the West Bank under full Israeli control, has been designated as firing zones. According to government meeting minutes in 1981, the then agriculture minister and future PM, Ariel Sharon, proposed the creation of firing zone 918 with the purpose of forcing Palestinians out of the area. In the meeting, Sharon told the IDF he wanted to expand shooting zones 'in order to keep these areas … in our hands', pointing to 'the expansion of the Arab villagers' in the area. In a comment, the Israeli military said the civil administration was 'holding ongoing discussions regarding villages built within the boundaries of firing zone 918' and that the military had a 'vital need for the area'. 'As a general rule, no approval will be granted for construction within the firing zone, which is designated as a closed military area,' the Israeli military said in a statement to the Guardian, adding that building permit requests were subject to approval by military command. To Awad, last week's decision is the latest attempt in a long line of court decisions and policies by the Israeli government to expel the residents of Masafer Yatta from their homes. In May 2022, Israel's high court ruled that the residents could be expelled and the land repurposed for military use, as it said villagers were not permanent residents of the area before the firing zone was declared. Residents and lawyers, relying on expert testimony and literature, said they had inhabited the area for decades. 'This decision was a clear way of cutting the last nerve of life that these people had,' said Awad, calling it part of a larger policy of 'ethnic cleansing of Palestinians'. Awad and the other residents of Masafer Yatta have spent more than two decades filing petitions, appeals, proposing master plans and submitting documents to try to fight the destruction of their community. 'We tried for many years to supply different documents and proofs and plans to the courts. But, after years of this, a commander in the army says no and that's enough,' said Nidal Younis, head of the Masafer Yatta council, in a press briefing late last month. As the residents navigate Israel's labyrinthine bureaucracy to stave off demolition orders, settlers have acted as the extrajudicial vanguard of displacement, making daily life nearly intolerable for Palestinians. Almost every single resident has a story about being harassed or attacked by nearby settlers, whose presence has been slowly growing, with new outposts popping up on the area's hilltops. In the early hours of 25 June, settlers set fire to Nasser Shreiteh's home in the town of Susiya, burning his kitchen and a bedroom almost entirely, running off as he tried to extinguish the fire. 'They want to evict everyone, they want everyone to disappear. But I am here, if they burn my house down, I will stay here, I have no other place to go,' said Shreiteh, a 50-year-old with seven children, as he overlooked the charred remains of his kitchen. As he spoke, an Israeli military patrol passed and behind it roared a beaten-up sedan driven by settlers, swerving in circles as the car's trunk swung open. They pulled up to Shreiteh's driveway and made an obscene hand gesture before driving off. Incidents of settler violence in the area have sharply increased since the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza. The rise of the far-right, extremist ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir has provided political cover, allowing settlers to act with virtual impunity. Many settlers have been called to military reserves, where they serve around their settlements. Residents of Masafer Yatta said settlers would often walk around in military dress, such as combat trousers, which made it impossible to tell whether they were dealing with settlers or soldiers. Settler violence has escalated the tighter residents have clung to their land. In late January, settlers torched Awad's car, which he had used to transport children to school and residents to legal hearings. Souad al-Mukhamari, a 61-year-old resident of Sfai, another village in Masafer Yatta, complained that one of her granddaughters, a child, had been beaten and pepper-sprayed by a settler a month earlier. Her own home overlooked the debris of a school that was demolished in 2022. Palestinians can do little to protect themselves from settler violence, and are severely punished if they attempt to do so. They complain that Israeli authorities fail to protect them and do not follow up on their complaints. Legal advocates have said they expect little protection from Israel's legal system, but instead are looking to the international community to increase pressure on Israel to halt settlement construction and protect the rights of Palestinians. 'We don't see any possibility of internal change within Israel to protect these communities,' said Sarit Michaeli, an international advocacy officer at the Israeli human rights group B'tselem. 'The only way to stop this is whether there is clear international action to clarify to Israeli policymakers that actions have consequences,' she added. The Trump administration has expressed little interest in addressing illegal settlement construction and violence, lifting Biden-era sanctions on settlers. Instead, Michaeli said the EU could play a role in pressuring Israeli officials, especially as it announced at the end of May that it is reviewing its association agreement with Israel over human rights compliance concerns. As residents of Masafer Yatta wait for international action, they live under the constant threat of displacement and settler violence, their means of resistance all stripped away one at a time. Still, they are determined to stay. 'Just mentally we are preparing for more demolitions. There's nothing more on the ground we can do, besides putting our words in the media so they can reach farther than we can scream,' Awad said.
The Guardian
03-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Masked Israeli troops block media visit to West Bank site of Oscar-winning film
Masked Israeli soldiers have blocked an international group of reporters from visiting Palestinian villages on the West Bank which have been under sustained attack by Jewish settlers, and which were the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary film. The Academy Award won by No Other Land has not stopped the attacks on Masafer Yatta, a cluster of villages on the southern edge of the occupied territory, which has been the target of settler violence and house demolitions and forced displacement by the army for many years. After soldiers almost complete destroyed one of the hamlets in the area, Khalet Al-Daba'a, in early May, two of the film's co-directors, Yuval Avraham and Basel Adra, invited journalists to visit the area, which is Adra's home, to witness the extent of the destruction first hand. 'It's not easy for me to write this, but my community Masafer Yatta will be destroyed unless more activists and journalists don't urgently come and join us on the ground,' Adra wrote on X. 'Settlers are now in [Khalet Al-Daba'a] village 24/7 after the army destroyed it.' The convoy of 20 reporters in press vehicles was stopped on the way to Masafer Yatta on Monday by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers wearing black balaclava-type masks hiding most of their faces. In a video taken at the scene and posted by Avraham, an IDF major gives the journalists 'a reasonable time of 10 minutes' to leave. The two film-makers can be seen remonstrating with the officer, pointing out that Adra had invited the journalists to his own home. 'They are coming to see the destruction in Masafer Yatta, the way that you are destroying the community, the settler violence,' Avraham says. The major responds by saying that the journalists were being prevented from visiting 'to keep order in this area', claiming they were causing a 'public disturbance'. Adra replies: 'You didn't prevent the settlers when they came to burn the homes inside, the cars, and attack people. I have so many videos of settlers coming to attack us and shoot people here. You do nothing. Why? Why now, only when journalists are coming to see this and to film this and to interview people, [are] you coming to prevent them?' He later wrote on X: 'This is what it means to live under occupation: a masked soldier decides who and when can pass, when to destroy or to invade our homes.' The IDF was asked for comment on Monday's incident but did not provide one. The International Solidarity Movement, a group set up to resist land seizures on occupied Palestinian territory, has said that two of its activists were detained in Khalet Al-Daba'a on Saturday, and that one of them, a 48-year-old Swedish resident of London, Susanne Björk, was deported. No Other Land, made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, won the Oscar on 2 March as the year's best documentary feature. Three weeks later, another of its co-directors, Hamdan Ballal, was attacked at his home in Masafer Yatta by a group of settlers and then detained by the IDF. Backed by the hardline coalition of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, settlers have accelerated their seizure of Palestinian land and villages since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. The government announced last week that it would establish 22 new settlements in the occupied territory, legalising a series of outposts initially established without official authorisation. The defence minister, Israel Katz, said the creation of the new settlements was 'a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel'.
Irish Times
03-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Irish pensioner in Israel fighting deportation order
A Swedish woman who was arrested along with Irish national Deirdre 'D' Murphy (71) by Israeli military on Saturday has spoken of the escalating violence happening all over the West Bank. Susanne Björk told RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland that 'our governments' were completely ignoring the situation 'not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. 'It's people like D and myself who come out there just to try and document what's happening and provide some solidarity with the Palestinian people and families.' Both of the women volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and were ordered to leave the village of Khalet Al-Daba'a in Masafer Yatta in the southern part of the occupied West Bank on Saturday. READ MORE [ Restricting food distribution in Gaza may constitute Israeli war crime, says UN rights office Opens in new window ] A spokesperson for ISM said they were complying with the order when they were arrested by Israeli settlers, who were wearing military uniform as they are reservists. The settlers then called police and detained Ms Murphy, from Co Cork, and Ms Björk. The two activists were ordered to appear at a deportation hearing at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Sunday where they were issued with deportation orders. Ms Björk was deported on Monday but Ms Murphy is fighting the deportation order and is currently still in a detention centre at Ben Gurion Airport. Ms Björk said she and other volunteers went to the region 'because the situation is so horrible'. 'This village, all over the West Bank, obviously the situation, is horrendous. People are absolutely terrified and the escalation of violence and settler violence and demolitions happening all over the West Bank is just horrendous and no one's reporting on this,' she said. 'I mean our governments are completely ignoring the situation not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. It's people like Dee and myself who are highlighting the situation.' [ Fintan O'Toole: Netanyahu's big lie is that 'They' are not really the same species as 'Us' Opens in new window ] This was the first time that Ms Björk had been arrested, but it was not the first time she had experienced such intimidation, she said. 'Usually that would have meant a ban from a certain area, perhaps, that you were not allowed to enter that area. But my lawyer said that this is a new policy that they've implemented in the last few months, where they arrest people and deport people straight away and send them to immigration hearing at Ben Gurion. And this is, I think, quite a new policy,' she added. 'They're just trying to get rid of anyone who tried to document the reality of the occupation and the war crimes taking place.' When asked if she would return, Ms Björk said she would if she could, but it seemed unlikely because she did not receive any of the documentation she was promised at the police hearing. 'They were supposed to provide us with an English transcript of the interview. I never received that. I also didn't receive any protocol from the immigration hearing.' The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it is aware of the case and is providing consular assistance. It said it does not comment on the details of individual cases. Ms Murphy is a founding member of Swansea Palestine Community Link and was previously detained in Israel in 2011, when she travelled to the Jewish state with the Welsh pro-Palestine group. Her son, Dale Ryan, said: 'As far as I can see her only crime was observing crimes against Palestinian people. D has always had a strong sense of justice and I know she could not sit at home while she knew her friends in Masafer Yatta and all of Palestine were suffering unnecessarily. 'I am very proud of my mother for sticking up for the basic human rights of her friends and trying to raise awareness of the injustices the Palestinian people are experiencing.'
