16 January 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | Masafer Yatta
Muhammed being led away by IOF soldiers. Credit: ISM.
For the villagers of Khallet Al Dabaa, in Masafer Yatta, shepherding is a traditional way of life. One which they have followed on their traditional lands in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills since Ottoman times. For the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) however, it is apparently an existential threat and one which needs to be dealt with severely.
Yesterday afternoon (Monday 15th January), Khallet resident Muhammed Debabse was with his flock on a hillside on village lands. It appears that, in response to illegal settlers from a nearby hilltop outpost taking exception to this, the IOF soldiers arrived soon after. They summarily detained Muhammed and took him away. His whereabouts were not known until the lawyer engaged by the family was able to establish that he had been taken to Kharyat Al Arba police station near Al Khalil (Hebron).
Anxious hours passed for his family until, at around 8pm, they received notification from the lawyer that Muhammed would be released but only on payment of a 1,000 NIS (£250) fine, a significant sum of money for the family. The fine being paid, Muhammed eventually returned home late in the evening, ten hours or so after being detained.
So what was his “crime”? The official letter (written in Hebrew only) which the police gave him on release did not specify any offence and only made reference to a “financial penalty”. In the eyes of the occupation however, any expression of ownership of the land by the Palestinians is an act of resistance and that’s the “crime” which Muhammed, along with his fellow villagers are guilty of.
Since the genocidal attack on Gaza began, the Israeli government has used it as an excuse to increase crimes in the West Bank and forcible expulsion of Palestinian from their ancestral land. Masafer Yatta has been no exception.
8 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Masafer Yatta, Occupied West Bank
In the morning of December 8th, around50 soldiers/settlers, most of whom wore masks, invaded the Palestinian village of Khallet Al-Dabaa, in Masafer Yatta, and violently attacked 5 people. The aggressors abducted Salah, a Palestinian man, father of 4 young children. They also ransacked and seriously damaged some houses and the elementary school of the village, destroying doors, windows and furniture. The soldiers/settlers stole 6000 shekels ($1600), and various property such as power drills, jackets, flashlights, binoculars. They also tore bags of food, stepped on bread and vegetables.
The soldiers/settlers then blocked the road to a nearby village and prevented an ambulance from reaching a diabetic 84-year-old Palestinian who needed urgent medical attention.
The 84-year-old Palestinian man passed out during the confrontation, while the head of the village council, Muhammad Rabai, who had called the ambulance, was arrested by the Israeli soldiers/settlers.
It was unclear whether the aggressors, who arrived in civilian vehicles, were settlers, Israeli army soldiers, or a group composed of both.
Palestinians in Masafer Yatta have been reporting that it is currently almost impossible to distinguish between army and groups of settlers, as the latter roam the area heavily armed, wearing Israeli army uniforms and balaklavas, and accompanied by soldiers.
During the attack, eyewitnesses recognized a particularly violent settler, going by the name of Eitan Yardeni, who resides in the illegal Israeli outpost of Havat Ma’on.
Colonial attacks and ethnic cleansing in Masafer Yatta
In the 1980s, Israeli authorities designated a part of Masafer Yatta as ’Firing Zone 918’, a closed military zone. This zone includes the land where Khallet Al-Dabaa is located. Since this declaration, residents have been at risk of forced eviction, house demolitions, and forcible transfer. One of the houses that was damaged during the December 8th attack has been demolished and rebuilt 5 times in the past.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), around 1,150 Palestinians lived in the firing zone in 2022, including 569 children.
In the past weeks, residents of Masafer Yatta have reported violent and continuous raids by armed settlers and Israeli soldiers, who assault and abduct Palestinians, destroy critical infrastrcutre in the villages such as power grids and water tanks, and steal property and livestock.
Palestinians have also been left homeless following demolitions by army bulldozers in several villages including Deirat, Umm Lasafa and Umm Qissa.
In October, Palestinians from the village of Khirbet Zanuta were forcibly displaced after armed settlers threatened them that they had 24 hours to leave their homes, before the settlers would come back and “kill everyone”.
A house in Khallet Al-Dabaa in a picture from August 2023 (top) and immediately after the attack (down). Settlers destroyed a wall that was decorated with two murales: “Where Will I Sleep” and “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea”
20 November 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | South Hebron Hills
Wadi Tiran is a good example, and sadly one of many, of Israel’s big plan to make Palestine the land without people. Over the last month, the community of Wadi Tiran has been repeatedly “visited” by either settlers or soldiers, or both (since distinguishing between them is more and more difficult nowadays), ordering everybody in the village to leave or they would kill them. One of these “visits” resulted in all windows on their tractor, pickup and their car being smashed.
Car smashed in Wadi Tiran
The ISM team, together with Israeli activists, has been part of the protective presence in Wadi Tiran for over a week and has witnessed some of the threats this small herding homestead has endured, including settlers on motorbikes and a quad coming nearby, and only yesterday (November 18) a four wheel drive vehicle with settlers appeared inside the homestead. The settlers did not get out of the car but instead drove around provocatively and proceeded to another Tiran homestead located on the nearby hill.
The Israeli activists called the Israeli police only to be asked by them, “Why are you supporting the terrorists?” Having witnessed the terror being inflicted on the residents of Wadi Tiran first hand, we ask the same question of the Israeli government, the United States government, and other national and international bodies that enable, support, and fund the ethnic cleansing of communities like Wadi Tiran.
Wadi Tiran is a small homestead where two brothers and their families, altogether about 30 people, most of them children, live, herding around 300 sheep and goats. The father of the two farmers was expelled in 1948 from the Yattir area and moved to the arid slope of the Wadi Tiran hill where they made life ever since.
Sheep and goats in Wadi Tiran
The two brothers talked with sadness and longing about their ancestral land where their father grew wheat, corn, chickpeas and lentils and where water was available in abundance. “Only in one part of Yattir there were more than 100 springs,” they recalled.
Keys hang from a communal space in Wadi Tiran. Many Palestinians have kept the keys to the ancestral homes from which they were expelled. It has become a popular symbol of the right to return for refugees.
Now the water they have comes from the rain collected in one well, which they use for animals, but there is not enough of it. Additional water has to be purchased and brought from the outside at the expense they could ill afford nowadays. Both brothers used to work from time to time doing agricultural work in Israel until the start of the current escalation in hostilities, and together with all other Palestinian workers they have now lost their jobs.
A well, almost empty, in Wadi Tiran
Efforts by the occupiers to make their already hard lives impossible have peaked now, but it started long ago. On our way to Wadi Tiran via the dirt road, we could see that in many parts it has been destroyed. That was the work of the Israeli army bulldozers, which three months ago piled boulders and piles of earth and rocks on the road in several locations to make access to the homestead difficult. We had to drive around them and sometimes over them, causing an unpleasant rocky ride, fearing for the damage to our vehicle.
The main threat to the farmers’ livelihood was ‘the law’ introduced verbally by the settlers setting out a boundary of 200 meters from the homestead where grazing is now banned. Since then, the brothers have had to buy practically all the food for their animals, and drive the seven monthly tons of it down the road ravaged by the army.
A boy in Wadi Tiran gives water to the village’s animals
Not that the Israel occupation was ever “light”, but since the war on Gaza all the rule books and established practices have been abandoned. Feeding on the rage the Israeli nation is in the grip of following the attacks by the fighters from Gaza, settlers are out of control and all pretences that occupation authorities are attempting to stop them from committing violence, has been dropped. The military knows about settler violence and either chooses to turn a blind eye or joins in on their violence.
What is also different currently is that nobody knows if those doing the harassing, attacking, and threatening are soldiers, settlers or settler security. The regular army has been sent to attack Gaza. The occupation of the West Bank and the “protection” of the illegal settlements was handed over to army reservists, many of whom are illegal settlers and settler security. They have formed “regional defence battalions” and these violent thuggish armies, often masked and fully or partially dressed in army uniforms, block the roads and village entrances and appear any time of day and night to attack the Palestinians, destroy their fields, their livestock and the contents of their homes.
They are either joined or are led by the “civilian” illegal settlers who have been handed large quantities of arms by Ben Gvir’s Security Ministry so that they can “defend” their settlements. While in the past the settlement security would mostly operate within the boundaries of the settlements, post October 7th, they are tasked with terrorizing and ethnically cleansing wide areas surrounding the settlements.
There is little doubt that without serious consequences from Israel’s powerful allies, and the United States in particular, the horrendous and criminal lawlessness and violence will leave the Wadi Tiran families without a future in this area.
Children in Wadi Tiran
Fathers of the two families told us that they fear for their future and the future of their children. “We have been farmers all our lives and that is what we do. Where shall we go?” the two farmers asked. That is the most asked question in the South Hebron Hills these days, leading to long sleepless nights, anxiety, fear, and a living nightmare, echoed in the lives of people from dozens of villages facing the same fate.
16 November 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Masafer Yatta
Shi’b Al Butm is a village on the side of one of the South Hebron Hills. It is home to 18 Palestinian families with an illegal Israeli settlement close by, and a settler outpost sprouted by the main settlement even closer, very near the houses at the top end of the village.
When we arrived last night, the yellowish shine of the settlement lights looked too near for comfort. The white lights of the the Palestinian town of Yatta were far more distant. A modern settler road stretches along the other side of the village, cutting through the rolling hills and cutting Shi’b Al Butm off from Yatta.
Our host and his family were sitting around a massive burning log of an olive tree trunk, with tea and coffee repeatedly making the rounds. When the settlers’ drone went up in the night sky, we knew that they were keeping an eye on us and reminding us of their presence.
There was some movement in the direction of the outpost. Night sounds are obvious to those who lived there all their lives, but not to us unfamiliar with the area.
The consensus was that it was likely to be the settlers removing the tent nearest to the village houses. Why do that in the middle of the night? Israeli solidarity activists told us that a tour of the settlements was organised for the next day to show their peaceful nature and idyllic nature and having a tent as a sign of outpost extension on the verge of a Palestinian village could not be a part of that gaslighting tour.
The host and his sons told us that they would be staying awake in shifts through the night and we made a rota for us internationals to keep them company. A Los Angeles Times journalist, spending the night in the village, also joined the vigil.
During my night shift, all noises were a cause for alert. Our host and his son again and again getting up, listening hard and shining a torch to make sure that there are no unwanted visitors. Then the dogs would start barking and our host’s son would venture in the dark to see what excited them.
Luckily the night was quiet, but with several men of the house hardly sleeping a wink. The idea was that they would all catch up on their sleep after the morning prayer.
An Israeli woman activist who spends lots of time in the area, staying in different villages, told me that the setters always come from the outpost just above the village. Last time, a few days ago, they came and told the entire village population to leave or they would kill them. But the villagers were not planning to leave, nor were they going to be caught asleep.
The Israeli activist said that that was the third in the wave of attacks since the start of the war on Gaza, with the previous ones ending in the entire contents of one home bring wrecked, flour spilled all over, flower pots smashed and a duck and chicken killed. She quoted the cynical remark of a villager: “Now that Palestinian lives don’t matter anymore, can someone at least try to protect the lives of animals?”
This week the International Solidarity Movement has been targeted in the Israeli media. Articles have appeared naming and showing pictures and videos of ISM Volunteers and Israeli activists accusing them of spreading ‘a false campaign against settler violence’ and of being Hamas supporters and ‘Nazi helpers’. In the current atmosphere of violenceagainst dissent this puts the individuals accused at considerable risk.
The right-wing attack on the ISM began after we called on supporters to contact international embassies over the situation in Masafer Yatta. Our callout must have touched a nerve, and we would like our supporters to renew efforts to pressure representative offices and embassies in the coming week.
The attack on ISM and other Human Rights Defenders is an attempt to ensure that there are no witnesses to report the attacks of Israeli colonial settlers on Palestinians, so that the settlers and military can continue committing ethnic cleansing across the West Bank with the support of the occupation. They claim that we are falsely posing as Human Rights defenders along with another 22 organizations who have called to stop the ethnic cleansing in the South Hebron Hills.
They are also accusing us of “fueling the false settler violence” campaign in order to cause significant damage to Israel in the international arena. In fact, our statements and documentation of the reality of the situation on the ground have only covered a fraction of the atrocities being committed by settlers. In September, the UN reported that settler-driven displacements had already been increasing in number throughout 2022, and that those Palestinians remaining in isolated communities were at “elevated risk.” Of the nearly 2,000 Palestinians displaced amid settler violence since 2022, 43% of these displacements by persistent settler attrition have occurred – in just over one month – since October 7th 2023.
We will not be intimidated, we will continue to provide protective presence to communities that ask for it, and we will continue to call-out and nonviolently resist the ethnic cleansing that is going on. Now is a critical moment in the Palestinian struggle, and in the global struggle for justice. Solidarity is needed now more than ever.
Since the beginning of the attack on Gaza our volunteers have reported on and witnessed uniformed settlers terrorizing small Palestinian hamlets, making threats to kill and opening fire at civilians with live ammunition. ISM’s role in Masafer Yatta – along with our Israeli comrades – is to maintain a protective presence to deter further violence, and to report on the colonial settlers’ attempt to forcibly displace Palestinians from the area.
Some of the articles in the Israeli right wing media have focused on an American former ISM volunteer who they claim is a founder and ‘the leader of ISM’. The person in question, although they were in the past an ISM volunteer, they were not a founder and nor were they a leader of ISM. In fact, one of ISM’s four guiding principles is that we are a non-hierarchical movement and do not have individual leaders. This individual is no longer a part of ISM following an internal process addressing ethical disagreements that ended with the individual in question leaving the group in 2017. ISM is not responsible for the actions of this – or any other – individual who do not operate within our principles aND are no longer connected to our support groups
The articles also say that ISM is “an operational arm of Hamas”, when in fact the ISM is independent. We are not proponents of any political parties. We use only nonviolent tactics, and believe that nonviolent actions are a powerful tool in fighting oppression, occupation and apartheid.
Attacks of this kind have recently escalated, but they are not new. Last November Bezalel Smotrich stated that human rights organizations are “an existential threat to Israel” and that their real purpose is “to undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”
As well as the ISM, the attack targets 22 other Left-wing organizations that recently issued a call to the international community to stop the ethnic cleansing and forcible displacements in the West Bank. The letter sent by the organizations reads: “The international community is called upon to act urgently to stop the wave of settler violence, which is carried out with the support of the state, and which leads and will lead to the expulsion of Palestinian communities in the West Bank. We believe that the only way to stop the deportation in the West Bank is through direct, strong and unequivocal intervention by the international community.”
The situation in the West Bank has rapidly deteriorated since the most recent war on Gaza began on October 7th. Since the start of the war on Gaza, more than 169 Palestinians – including 46 children – have been killed in the West Bank, and more than 3,000 have been arrested. As Gaza suffers from ceaseless and criminal bombing, settlers have expanded their attacks on herding and isolated rural communities in the West Bank to force Palestinians to leave by making their lives unbearable. In herding communities in the South Hebron hills, armed settlers close off access roads, attacking those who try to leave. Villagers are regularly injured by settlers opening fire with live ammunition. No food or fodder can get into communities, children cannot access their schools, and the community members are in a persistent state of anxiety and dread.
The ISM has maintained a continuous presence in the West Bank since the beginning of the Second Intifada. Our role is to support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, and provide an internationalist platform for volunteers to stand side-by-side with Palestinians, enhance Palestinian voices and bring the truth of ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing to the international community.
ISM Volunteers, side-by-side with Israeli human rights defenders, provide a protective presence in these West Bank communities. We are hosted by members of the community. Our presence is intended to deter settlers and the Israeli Occupation Forces carrying out acts of violence in these communities. Volunteers document human rights violations and act as night guards in the communities staying awake overnight so that the families can get some sleep.
As the world’s eyes are rightly upon the Israeli genocide taking place in Gaza, many horrific episodes of ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities are taking place in the dark in the West Bank, unnoticed by the majority of the international community.
We ask people around the world to pressure their governments to take immediate action to stop the attacks happening in the West Bank
Script for communication to Embassies and Representatives:
I am writing to demand rapid action be taken by this body to defend human rights in the West Bank. As violations of International Humanitarian Law continue to be committed against occupied Palestinians, world leaders who do not take every action to defend human life and dignity are complicit in the denial of them.
Daily incidents of violence committed by Israeli settlers against isolated and vulnerable Palestinian families in the South Hebron Hills are being documented and transmitted to the world. Daily transgressions of the rights of Palestinians to live their lives without being harassed, searched, arbitrarily arrested and held without charge, raided, shot at and humiliated by the army and settlers -who are being emboldened by the silence of the international community. These violations are being reported by human rights organizations across the globe. With the whole world watching, what side of history will you be on?
