NefeshBarYochai
2024-04-30 20:10:21 UTC
Violent Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank
have skyrocketed ever since October 7. Before that, 2022 and 2023 were
already setting record highs in settler violence, but the nature of
settler attacks today is on an entirely different level. Settlers are
now expelling entire Palestinian communities from their villages for
the first time in decades.
According to the UN, Israeli settlers expelled about 1,200
Palestinians from some 25 rural communities across the West Bank,
including seven communities that have been completely depopulated.
To say that this is historically unprecedented since the 1967 war
would be an understatement.
In recent weeks, Israeli settlers ramped up their attacks on several
Palestinian villages east of Ramallah. On April 11, following the
disappearance of a teenage settler near the village of al-Mughayyir,
hundreds of settlers launched a series of pogroms against neighboring
Palestinian villages.
Settlers came from the nearby settlement of Shilo up the hill and
began to attack livestock barracks in the plain outside the village,
Abu Musa Bashir, a resident of al-Mughayyir, tells Mondoweiss. They
entered the village and began to shoot at houses, killing a young man
who tried to defend his house with stones from his rooftop.
For two days, settlers wounded dozens of people, burned eight houses,
five livestock barracks, and many cars, he said. This is not the
first time they attacked al-Mughayyir, but in recent months, the
settlers pressure on the village has increased, leaving everyone in
constant terror.
The location of the attacks wasnt a coincidence. The Israeli teenager
went missing near al-Mughayyir and was later found dead in the same
area. But the attacks extended to the neighboring villages of Mazraa
Sharqiyyah, Turmusayya, Sinjel, Libban, Duma, and Aqraba, stretching
from the northeast of Ramallah to the southeast of Nablus.
This line of villages, moving north to south between the two cities,
overlooks the Jordan Valley to the east, at the edge of the
semi-contiguous Palestinian demographic presence in the central West
Bank.
The lands of these villages extend into the eastern slopes of the
central West Bank a semi-arid chain of valleys and hills that spill
into the Jordan Valley. Palestinian villagers used to cultivate these
slopes until 1967, when Israel declared most of them closed military
zones. They are also the most fertile areas of the entire West Bank.
Bedouin Palestinian communities have lived on these slopes for
generations, moving their livestock up and down the hills depending on
the season and using the space for herding. In doing so, they have
maintained a centuries-old lifestyle that is native to the region. The
only thing standing in the way of the annexation of these lands by
Israel are these Palestinian communities, which is why settlers and
Israeli authorities have been gradually expelling them in a piecemeal
fashion, as in the case of the slow ethnic cleansing of the Bedouin
community of Ein Samiya in May 2023.
After October 7, everything changed. Israeli settlers expelled most of
the Bedouin communities in the last six months. And now the geographic
pattern of settler violence in the West Bank becomes clearer: they are
pushing for the depopulation of the Palestinian villages bordering the
Jordan Valley.
On October 12, the largest Bedouin community on the eastern slopes of
the central West Bank, Wadi Siq, ceased to exist. Armed Israeli
settlers entered Wadi Siq at noon and told Palestinian families to
leave and never come back under threat of death.
Abu Bashar Kaabneh, head of one of the families in Wadi Siq and
spokesperson for the community, crossed the Israeli road from the
valley where the community stood, and moved less than three kilometers
away to the west of the Israeli highway, settling with his and other
families on the lands of the Palestinian village of Rammun.
We are originally from the Naqab desert, in the south of historic
Palestine, Kaabneh tells Mondoweiss. Our parents were forced out of
there in the Nakba in 1948, and settled in the southern tip of the
south Hebron hills, known as Masafer Yatta.
The occupation army forced them to leave again after taking over in
1967, and they scattered along the Jordan Valley and the eastern
slopes until, in the late seventies, some 40 families gathered in Wadi
Siq and created the community.
We were always banned from building so we lived in trailer houses and
tents because the entire Jordan Valley and the slopes are a part of
area C. They just let us live there, although with a lot of
restrictions, until 2020, Kaabneh recalled. Settlers began to
harass us, bulldozing land around the community with the excuse of
preparing for a new settlement and banning us from herding near
specific areas, but then they began to become violent.
When we were forced out, some settlers wore Israeli reserve army
uniforms. Others went into the houses and kicked women out, while some
men were arrested and beaten. Many were forced to leave without taking
clothes or personal belongings, and some went missing in the valley
before reaching the road, Kaabneh says, recounting the harrowing
events of last October. We are now in the same area, technically just
across the road, but no longer in area C.
Settler attacks on this area first began to take a deadly turn in
2015, when Israeli settlers torched the Dawabsheh familys home in the
village of Duma, killing an entire family, including 18-month-old Ali.
The solve survivor of the family was 10-year-old Ahmad Dawabsheh,
suffering serious burns.
A year ago, in March 2023, settlers tried to do the same to a farmers
family outside of the village of Sinjel, halfway between Ramallah and
Nablus. Settlers threw burning objects inside the house of the family
from a small window opening. The family, including both parents and
three children, escaped from a back door at the last minute, surviving
but losing their home.
The first thing to note about the line of eastern villages is that it
forms the natural edge of the Jordan Valley, Khalil Tafakji, a top
Palestinian expert on Israeli settlements and former head of the maps
unit at Jerusalems Orient House, tells Mondoweiss. And the first
thing to remember about the Jordan Valley, as far as settlements are
concerned, is the Allon plan of 1967.
The Allon plan, devised by Israels then-labor minister Yigal Allon
shortly after Israels occupation of the West Bank suggested annexing
large parts of the West Bank by Israel and leaving the rest to Jordan.
The portion of the West Bank whose annexation Allon proposed was the
Jordan Valley. According to Allons plan, the demarcating line that
sat on the edge of the prospective area to be annexed was the eastern
line of villages that have been at the center of settler violence in
recent weeks.
The Jordan Valley is just too strategic for Israel, but it has
nothing to do with security, explained Tafakji. The Jordan Valley is
an economic asset, the main agricultural land [in the West Bank].
Without it, a Palestinian state would never stand a chance.
The expulsion of Palestinian communities in the eastern slopes
guarantees for Israel an interruption to Palestinian demographic
contiguity, cutting off the Jordan Valley from the central West Bank,
while the villages themselves are meant to be the border, Tafakji
says. In doing so, he says that Israel intends to turn the main
Palestinian cities in the West Bank, such as Ramallah, Bethlehem, and
Jenin, into isolated ghettos. This was [also] the basis for the
Sharon plan of the 1990s, he notes.
Former Israeli Prime Minister and then-minister of foreign affairs
Ariel Sharon designed a plan in the 1990s that complemented the Allon
Plan. It included the expansion of settlements between the 1949 Green
Line and the Jordan Valley in the very heart of the West Bank, cutting
off the northern West Bank from its center. This was then later
complemented by Sharons implementation of the annexation wall in
2004, which trapped Palestinians in non-contiguous and closed-off
enclaves. Their eastern border was the line of villages overlooking
the Jordan Valley.
This was the entire purpose of dividing the West Bank into areas A,
B, and C in the Oslo accords, Jamal Jumaa, coordinator of the
Palestinian Stop The Wall campaign, tells Mondoweiss. The wall plan
follows the Oslo division lines, completing the process of isolating
Palestinian areas from each other, with the only connection between
them being a series of tunnels, gates, and checkpoints that would make
Palestinian life as a cohesive entity in the West Bank practically
impossible.
But then the remaining Palestinians in area C would need to be
removed, and that is where settlers violence comes in, he added.
Bedouin family displaced from the eastern slopes in October camping on
the lands of the village of Rammun, east of Ramallah, across the
Demographics and change of policy
Israeli settler demographics in the West Bank have grown to more than
600,000 Jewish Israelis in recent years. But their actual presence in
area C of the West Bank outside of the major settlement blocks hasnt
grown at the same rate.
According to a study published by a group of Israeli researchers at
Reichman University in early March, Israels settlement policy in area
C had failed.
Researchers argue that rates of Israeli settlers moving into the area
are much lower than those leaving the area to go to major Israeli
cities and settlement blocks. Moreover, the study asserts that
Palestinians have continued to grow in numbers in Area C due to family
property deeds and high birth rates.
According to the study, the ratio of Israelis to Palestinians in Area
C has decreased from 81% in 2010 to 58% in 2023. The study concluded
with a recommendation to stop investing in a losing real estate
project and to change orientation in the West Bank.
The change of policy orientation could mean many things, Tafakji
says. Including settler violence, especially when settlers have
become so influential in Israeli policy.
The fact that these areas are particularly targeted is no
coincidence, and the fact that settler groups allied with Israeli
politicians orchestrate these attacks is not a coincidence either, he
stresses.
At Rammun, Abu Bashar Kaabneh reflects on his expulsion from the
valley just across the Allon road, named after Yigal Allon, who drew
its line on the map in 1967.
We came to this side of the road after our lives were threatened, but
we didnt go far away, he remarks. Ive lived all my life moving up
and down the eastern slopes between these villages and Jericho. I
cant fathom how this road will cut us off and become a border. It
just doesnt make sense.
Meanwhile, in al-Mughayyir, where villagers are still counting their
losses from the latest settler attack, Bashir Abu Musa insists, We
are peasants, and our land is part of who we are.
They can kill everyone in the village, but we arent going anywhere,
he says.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/what-recent-israeli-settler-violence-in-the-west-bank-is-really-about/
have skyrocketed ever since October 7. Before that, 2022 and 2023 were
already setting record highs in settler violence, but the nature of
settler attacks today is on an entirely different level. Settlers are
now expelling entire Palestinian communities from their villages for
the first time in decades.
According to the UN, Israeli settlers expelled about 1,200
Palestinians from some 25 rural communities across the West Bank,
including seven communities that have been completely depopulated.
To say that this is historically unprecedented since the 1967 war
would be an understatement.
In recent weeks, Israeli settlers ramped up their attacks on several
Palestinian villages east of Ramallah. On April 11, following the
disappearance of a teenage settler near the village of al-Mughayyir,
hundreds of settlers launched a series of pogroms against neighboring
Palestinian villages.
Settlers came from the nearby settlement of Shilo up the hill and
began to attack livestock barracks in the plain outside the village,
Abu Musa Bashir, a resident of al-Mughayyir, tells Mondoweiss. They
entered the village and began to shoot at houses, killing a young man
who tried to defend his house with stones from his rooftop.
For two days, settlers wounded dozens of people, burned eight houses,
five livestock barracks, and many cars, he said. This is not the
first time they attacked al-Mughayyir, but in recent months, the
settlers pressure on the village has increased, leaving everyone in
constant terror.
The location of the attacks wasnt a coincidence. The Israeli teenager
went missing near al-Mughayyir and was later found dead in the same
area. But the attacks extended to the neighboring villages of Mazraa
Sharqiyyah, Turmusayya, Sinjel, Libban, Duma, and Aqraba, stretching
from the northeast of Ramallah to the southeast of Nablus.
This line of villages, moving north to south between the two cities,
overlooks the Jordan Valley to the east, at the edge of the
semi-contiguous Palestinian demographic presence in the central West
Bank.
The lands of these villages extend into the eastern slopes of the
central West Bank a semi-arid chain of valleys and hills that spill
into the Jordan Valley. Palestinian villagers used to cultivate these
slopes until 1967, when Israel declared most of them closed military
zones. They are also the most fertile areas of the entire West Bank.
Bedouin Palestinian communities have lived on these slopes for
generations, moving their livestock up and down the hills depending on
the season and using the space for herding. In doing so, they have
maintained a centuries-old lifestyle that is native to the region. The
only thing standing in the way of the annexation of these lands by
Israel are these Palestinian communities, which is why settlers and
Israeli authorities have been gradually expelling them in a piecemeal
fashion, as in the case of the slow ethnic cleansing of the Bedouin
community of Ein Samiya in May 2023.
After October 7, everything changed. Israeli settlers expelled most of
the Bedouin communities in the last six months. And now the geographic
pattern of settler violence in the West Bank becomes clearer: they are
pushing for the depopulation of the Palestinian villages bordering the
Jordan Valley.
On October 12, the largest Bedouin community on the eastern slopes of
the central West Bank, Wadi Siq, ceased to exist. Armed Israeli
settlers entered Wadi Siq at noon and told Palestinian families to
leave and never come back under threat of death.
Abu Bashar Kaabneh, head of one of the families in Wadi Siq and
spokesperson for the community, crossed the Israeli road from the
valley where the community stood, and moved less than three kilometers
away to the west of the Israeli highway, settling with his and other
families on the lands of the Palestinian village of Rammun.
We are originally from the Naqab desert, in the south of historic
Palestine, Kaabneh tells Mondoweiss. Our parents were forced out of
there in the Nakba in 1948, and settled in the southern tip of the
south Hebron hills, known as Masafer Yatta.
The occupation army forced them to leave again after taking over in
1967, and they scattered along the Jordan Valley and the eastern
slopes until, in the late seventies, some 40 families gathered in Wadi
Siq and created the community.
We were always banned from building so we lived in trailer houses and
tents because the entire Jordan Valley and the slopes are a part of
area C. They just let us live there, although with a lot of
restrictions, until 2020, Kaabneh recalled. Settlers began to
harass us, bulldozing land around the community with the excuse of
preparing for a new settlement and banning us from herding near
specific areas, but then they began to become violent.
When we were forced out, some settlers wore Israeli reserve army
uniforms. Others went into the houses and kicked women out, while some
men were arrested and beaten. Many were forced to leave without taking
clothes or personal belongings, and some went missing in the valley
before reaching the road, Kaabneh says, recounting the harrowing
events of last October. We are now in the same area, technically just
across the road, but no longer in area C.
Settler attacks on this area first began to take a deadly turn in
2015, when Israeli settlers torched the Dawabsheh familys home in the
village of Duma, killing an entire family, including 18-month-old Ali.
The solve survivor of the family was 10-year-old Ahmad Dawabsheh,
suffering serious burns.
A year ago, in March 2023, settlers tried to do the same to a farmers
family outside of the village of Sinjel, halfway between Ramallah and
Nablus. Settlers threw burning objects inside the house of the family
from a small window opening. The family, including both parents and
three children, escaped from a back door at the last minute, surviving
but losing their home.
The first thing to note about the line of eastern villages is that it
forms the natural edge of the Jordan Valley, Khalil Tafakji, a top
Palestinian expert on Israeli settlements and former head of the maps
unit at Jerusalems Orient House, tells Mondoweiss. And the first
thing to remember about the Jordan Valley, as far as settlements are
concerned, is the Allon plan of 1967.
The Allon plan, devised by Israels then-labor minister Yigal Allon
shortly after Israels occupation of the West Bank suggested annexing
large parts of the West Bank by Israel and leaving the rest to Jordan.
The portion of the West Bank whose annexation Allon proposed was the
Jordan Valley. According to Allons plan, the demarcating line that
sat on the edge of the prospective area to be annexed was the eastern
line of villages that have been at the center of settler violence in
recent weeks.
The Jordan Valley is just too strategic for Israel, but it has
nothing to do with security, explained Tafakji. The Jordan Valley is
an economic asset, the main agricultural land [in the West Bank].
Without it, a Palestinian state would never stand a chance.
The expulsion of Palestinian communities in the eastern slopes
guarantees for Israel an interruption to Palestinian demographic
contiguity, cutting off the Jordan Valley from the central West Bank,
while the villages themselves are meant to be the border, Tafakji
says. In doing so, he says that Israel intends to turn the main
Palestinian cities in the West Bank, such as Ramallah, Bethlehem, and
Jenin, into isolated ghettos. This was [also] the basis for the
Sharon plan of the 1990s, he notes.
Former Israeli Prime Minister and then-minister of foreign affairs
Ariel Sharon designed a plan in the 1990s that complemented the Allon
Plan. It included the expansion of settlements between the 1949 Green
Line and the Jordan Valley in the very heart of the West Bank, cutting
off the northern West Bank from its center. This was then later
complemented by Sharons implementation of the annexation wall in
2004, which trapped Palestinians in non-contiguous and closed-off
enclaves. Their eastern border was the line of villages overlooking
the Jordan Valley.
This was the entire purpose of dividing the West Bank into areas A,
B, and C in the Oslo accords, Jamal Jumaa, coordinator of the
Palestinian Stop The Wall campaign, tells Mondoweiss. The wall plan
follows the Oslo division lines, completing the process of isolating
Palestinian areas from each other, with the only connection between
them being a series of tunnels, gates, and checkpoints that would make
Palestinian life as a cohesive entity in the West Bank practically
impossible.
But then the remaining Palestinians in area C would need to be
removed, and that is where settlers violence comes in, he added.
Bedouin family displaced from the eastern slopes in October camping on
the lands of the village of Rammun, east of Ramallah, across the
Demographics and change of policy
Israeli settler demographics in the West Bank have grown to more than
600,000 Jewish Israelis in recent years. But their actual presence in
area C of the West Bank outside of the major settlement blocks hasnt
grown at the same rate.
According to a study published by a group of Israeli researchers at
Reichman University in early March, Israels settlement policy in area
C had failed.
Researchers argue that rates of Israeli settlers moving into the area
are much lower than those leaving the area to go to major Israeli
cities and settlement blocks. Moreover, the study asserts that
Palestinians have continued to grow in numbers in Area C due to family
property deeds and high birth rates.
According to the study, the ratio of Israelis to Palestinians in Area
C has decreased from 81% in 2010 to 58% in 2023. The study concluded
with a recommendation to stop investing in a losing real estate
project and to change orientation in the West Bank.
The change of policy orientation could mean many things, Tafakji
says. Including settler violence, especially when settlers have
become so influential in Israeli policy.
The fact that these areas are particularly targeted is no
coincidence, and the fact that settler groups allied with Israeli
politicians orchestrate these attacks is not a coincidence either, he
stresses.
At Rammun, Abu Bashar Kaabneh reflects on his expulsion from the
valley just across the Allon road, named after Yigal Allon, who drew
its line on the map in 1967.
We came to this side of the road after our lives were threatened, but
we didnt go far away, he remarks. Ive lived all my life moving up
and down the eastern slopes between these villages and Jericho. I
cant fathom how this road will cut us off and become a border. It
just doesnt make sense.
Meanwhile, in al-Mughayyir, where villagers are still counting their
losses from the latest settler attack, Bashir Abu Musa insists, We
are peasants, and our land is part of who we are.
They can kill everyone in the village, but we arent going anywhere,
he says.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/what-recent-israeli-settler-violence-in-the-west-bank-is-really-about/
