Contact info: palreports@gmail.com
Masafer Yatta – On the afternoon of September 27, nine Israeli settlers invaded the village of al Fakhit, in Masafer Yatta, with their flock and injured a Palestinian woman and a US and Canadian activists, breaking the finger and potentially the wrist of one of them.
When the settlers entered the village, three of them attacked a female resident and a solidarity activist, violently kicking them both. They knocked the solidarity activist to the ground and continued beating her legs with sticks. The settlers also beat another activist about twenty times using sticks as well as their shoes, knees, and fists, striking her legs, backside, chest and left arm and sexually assaulted her. They also threatened her with a gun. The settlers spat in the activists’ faces twice, called them “bitches,” and snatched away their phones. The assault lasted about an hour.
The rest of the mob invaded and damaged the village school, tore open sacks of sheep feed, punctured the village’s water pipe, opened the water tank, beat the dogs and let their herd eat the Palestinians’ trees. They stole a resident’s GoPro camera, pulled the keffiyeh off his head and trampled it. The settlers began to withdraw when police arrived in the area, and were later seen splashing around in the village’s water reservoir. When the police arrived, they yelled at the activists to hand over their passports completely disregarding the settlers.
It is worth noting that the two activists were just filming at a distance, and when one of the settlers began shouting at them and getting close they moved back. The three settlers then cornered and attacked them. The activist who was knocked to the ground has a broken finger and potentially a broken wrist, and her arm is now in a cast. The activist who was struck on her chest was left breathless for a few moments and her arm became numb due to the beating. Whilst he was attacking them, one of the settlers kept repeating “we want peace and love”.
This is not the first time one of these settlers has attacked and injured a solidarity activist, making this an emerging pattern of physical assault. On September 30, two of these settlers also attacked and kicked a Palestinian in a nearby village in Masafer Yatta, again acting with impunity and without any consequences.
One of the injured activists said: “We were with families in al Fakhit when settlers showed up and brutally attacked us and one of the women of the village. We started moving back when settlers became violent but that did not help. This was a brutal attack that we know will remain unaccounted for as all the other crimes settlers and the Israeli state commit. Palestinians are the first receivers of this colonial violence, which they have been suffering for decades on a daily basis, but we know that this is also directed -in a much smaller scale- towards whoever stands in solidarity with the community here, in an attempt to drive us away and isolate the Palestinians even more. We will not be intimidated and we will continue supporting the Palestinian struggle and their right to freedom and self-determination.”
Al Fakhit is a small village in Masafer Yatta that, together with other fourteen hamlets of the area, was targeted by a big military operation in November 1999. The Palestinians were evicted from their land, but thanks to a massive media campaign organized by residents and supporters, villagers were able to return four months later. Since then, the Israeli state has been using firing zone laws to pressure the families to leave, has been encouraging illegal settlers to harass and assault them, and has been trying to silence anyone who speaks up. In July 2025, settlers targeted the village of al Fakhit twice — in one incident, settlers cut a Palestinian woman’s nose with a knife, and in the other, masked settlers on horseback beat a Palestinian woman during the night.
In the 1980s, Israeli authorities illegally designated a part of Masafer Yatta as ‘Firing Zone 918’, a closed military area. Since this declaration, residents have been at continuous risk of harassment, housing demolitions, and forced transfer. Since October 7 2023, Palestinians have faced escalating settler violence, aided and abetted by the Israeli army and police, aimed at accelerating the ethnic cleansing of the area. In the last months and years, villages have seen weekly demolitions and daily settlers’ attacks towards residents, property and basic infrastructure.
Al Fakhit is one of over a dozen hamlets in Masafer Yatta which is under immediate threat of ethnic cleansing. We ask the international community to act now, to increase the pressure on Western governments to stop the genocide and the forced displacement, to bring justice for the Palestinians and to stop harassing supporters of the Palestinian cause.
