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In the West Bank, villages like Umm Safa and Burqa endure relentless settler attacks, military-backed impunity and systematic violations of rights. From torched farmland to demolished schools, Palestinians face daily struggles for survival, yet continue to resist with courage, ingenuity and hope…
“TWO WEEKS AGO, there was a raid on my village. It was huge. I was sleeping, and my aunt — she lives with us in the same house — came to my room at 2 am. She was shaking from fear, and she was telling me, ‘Sana, Sana, they’re here!’ I heard them beating the doors of our neighbours, yelling. So I woke up with her, and we just stayed awake until 5 am, just like waiting and trying to see what will happen, with my aunt hysterically crying.”
Like so many people who live outside of the cities in the West Bank, Sana’ Karajeh has a story of a settler attack. But it doesn’t always end at 5 am. After an attack elsewhere in Ramallah, the Israeli army arrived, not to take testimonies or to protect the villagers of Umm Safa. Instead, they fired live ammunition, tear gas and sound grenades at Palestinians who had gathered in the village after the attack.
This is one of 1764 settler attacks documented by the UN’s OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) from early October 2023 to the end of November 2024. 2023 and 2024 were both record-breaking years for settler attacks.
This attack on Umm Safa, though terrifying for locals, was small compared to some. Villages such as Jit and Al-Mughayyir have seen enormous property damage in recent attacks, as did Hawara in early 2023 where dozens of cars were torched in a rampage.
Some extremist settlers are sanctioned by the EU and US, including in one case for attacks on Umm Safa, and sometimes Israeli politicians criticise the level or style of violence. So bad are the attacks now that even the US has moved to sanction a settlement development organisation for the first time, due to its relationship with extremist and violent settlers.
But just as the number of settlements and outposts keeps rising and rising, the attacks show no signs of abating. They happen with near total impunity and tacit or overt army backing. Research on the years 2005-2023 shows a 3% conviction rate for cases taken of settler attacks on Palestinians. Many attacks go unreported.
Many thousands of weapons have also been distributed to settlers by Ben Gvir, the Minister of National Security for Israel.
Harvest season in particular sees a spike in attacks, with thousands of hectares of agricultural land made inaccessible for Palestinian farmers in 2023 and 2024. Two young farmers in Umm Safa, Adham and Malek Karaja, know about these sorts of restrictions only too well.
The pair run a mixed horticulture holding as members of an informal coop. They used to have a different farm, but that land – after years of hard work and investment – is now no longer accessible to them.
Chatting in one of the six polytunnels on site, Sanna explains their backstory: “In 2017 they had great plans. They planted 200 fig trees, pomegranates, and they even dug a well with their own hands, without any machines, because for agricultural land in area C, they’re prohibited from using any machines.” Area C is an area of the West Bank still under formal Israeli control since the Oslo Accords. It is also where most of the farmland is.
But now, with settler attacks and its proximity to the separation wall — which runs for over 800 KM, mostly through the West Bank — it’s too dangerous to try to access this land. The land access permit system has collapsed, and land close to the wall or to settlements is almost impossible for farmers to get to.
Umm Safa is increasingly surrounded by settlements, which are illegal under international law. Even protesting potential settlements has seen locals shot and killed by the army.
Sana’ works in Ramallah for UWAC, the Union of Agriculture Work Committees, a farming development and advocacy organisation. Though the office is just 12 km away, new checkpoints mean her work commute is fraught and time-consuming. “They have been putting checkpoints into and out of the village, to check IDs, to search cars, at strategic times, 7.30 AM and 4. So they want people who are going to work, going to school, to be late for all of their appointments. And coming back, people are already tired, they just want to go home, to rest. It takes a mental toll on you. You might plan to change your clothes, take a shower, have dinner, talk to my family, that all changes”.
This is the everyday reality – on occasion, checkpoints are also flashpoints for confrontations, stabbings and killings.
Khadeja Zahran also works in Ramallah for MIFTAH, a human rights organisation. When asked to “take me through a typical settler attack” she gives an alarmingly direct answer.
“I’ll talk about one example, which is my village. I live next to a village called Burqa near Ramallah. Burqa faces daily attacks by settlers who storm in the dozens… at night, they’ll set fire to livestock, to buildings, to the mosque, to cars… they use live ammunition, knives”.
Burqa is surrounded by four settlement outposts — Oz Zion, Givat Assaf, Ramat Migron, and Tsur Harel. The UN has documented dozens of attacks on Burqa in recent months.
There are worrying developments. “We’re seeing new tactics being used by settlers to attack Palestinians and their livestock and agriculture. They often throw this flammable material at the livestock so that it burns more quickly, and it’s harder to extinguish the fire. And to this point, we don’t know what this material is.”
Women and children are especially vulnerable to settler attacks and face lifelong consequences.
“Women in particular are affected because women are often left home alone. If their husband and sons are out to work, and they’ll be left alone and are more vulnerable to settler attacks.
Settler attacks can end up limiting women’s life chances from an early age: “We also see that young girls living next to settlements can be pushed to get married off young because the family sees that this is just the safest route to her, for her to get her away from the settlements and away from the attacks.”
The previous day, myself and Saana had travelled with UWAC south to Hebron. There, in the Masafer Yatta region, we visited a school and helped distribute school bags and winter coats.
The school was bright, noisy and colourful, with excited pupils enjoying a different day with outside visitors coming in. Yet here too there are severe pressures on and restrictions to the right to education.
Teachers here told us about the small school bus that has rocks thrown at it, while both pupils and teachers can be held up and delayed for hours at checkpoints. “Some walk miles to teach and some come by donkey” we were told.
Students from villages behind settlements can’t come here anymore. A mixture of online learning and longer trips to other schools has helped. But even then, internet connections are unreliable and equipment can be confiscated in night time raids of local villages.
“The right to education and the right to work are violated almost daily” an educator put it when addressing the courtyard, full of children and us internationals. “Nowhere else in the world is the right to education taken away so easily, schools are demolished here. Where is the international community?”
There were no schools in the region until 2009 when tent schools were established. But keeping schools up and running is a challenge in itself. As has been documented by the UN’s OCHA and the Norwegian Refugee Council, schools themselves are attacked by both soldiers and settlers.
Schools, including those built with EU funds, are often demolished, including right here in Masafer Yatta. Permits to build in area C are almost impossible to get for Palestinians, and becoming more so. Just 33 permits were granted from 2017-2022 for the entire West Bank, while 1169 Palestinian structures were demolished in the same period. So schools, and everything else, have been built without them.
The area has been declared a military firing zone – along with 20% of the entire West Bank — so the state policy is effectively to drive people, who live “in a state of constant fear” according to the OCHA, out of the region.
Like so much that happens here, forcible transfer of people is prohibited under International Law.
Looking around the joyful schoolyard, and knowing how hard it is to just even turn up for everyone I can see, I couldn’t help being reminded of something Khadeja Zahran said the day before. “We Palestinians have no one to protect us, not the Palestinian Authority, not the Israeli army — who are legally obligated to protect Palestinians from settlers. They don’t do that. In fact, they aid them, and they protect the settlers.”
Whatever about the law, and mild rebukes issued by the EU and US, when it comes to settler attacks, Palestinians understandably feel abandoned.
Ostensibly, the EU-Israel Association Agreement — which gives Israel extra access to the EU — has binding and essential humanitarian clauses in it. Even more ostensibly, there is some effort to differentiate goods from the settlements to goods from Israel. Legislation is one thing – implementation and enforcement another. Will any EU member state step up to see the letter of the law implemented?
As a member of Irish farming organisation Talamh Beo, Oliver Moore was part of an international delegation of La Via Campesina to visit the Occupied Palestinian territories from 8-18th December 2024. UWAC – the Union of Agriculture Work Committees – were the hosts.
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