Tag: Settlers

West Bank: record amount of land stolen by Israel. More acres annexed since Oct. 7 than in 30 years

Beit Lid – North West Bank

“Since October 7, while all eyes are on Gaza where they are destroying everything, the Israelis have seized the highest number of dunams ever here in the West Bank. “In one year they declared more hectares as ‘Israeli land’ than they had ever declared in the past 30 years,” says R., looking at the new outpost rising in front of us in Beit Lid. “If Western states continue to fund and legitimize Israel, maybe they really will try to annex the whole West Bank.” He shakes his head. “In addition to the land they take, you have to count all the roads they block, and the lands you no longer have access to because are close to the new Israeli settlements.” A demand, a silent shout that resonates ever more clearly from north to south in the West Bank, where Israel is waging a full-fledged war of annexation, consisting of record land seizures, destruction of Palestinian homes, and a flood of funds for illegal colonies already springing up on Palestinian land.

R.’s extended family welcomes us among the olive trees in the small village of 5,600 inhabitants located between Tulkarem and Nablus in the northern West Bank. They serve us tea first, then coffee, in the tradition of deep welcome typical of Palestinians. There are six farmers gathered to meet us. “There it is, you see? That is the new Abu Jamrah outpost, which will enlarge the Einav colony. They stole 30 dunams of land from us to build it.” In front of us, on the hill opposite, caravans and prefabs, a communications antenna, cars and vehicles. “Since October 7, the Israeli Authority has started expanding its settlements in the Palestinian territories. This is just one example. In recent months here in Tulkarem province alone they have built 4 more outposts: Qaffin, Shweikeh, Avni Hevets (shouffeh) and Jbara. They are taking more and more land, in everyone’s silence,” says R. Hundreds of meters as the crow flies from the outpost, in the middle of the vegetation, a large Israeli flag flies. “They want to go all the way there. As always, they have no right to it. That land belonged to my grandfather’s family.” In the area around Tulkarem, the Israelis are not even issuing agreements to access even a few days’ worth of land: it is a collective punishment for the entire population of the village, considered the “cradle” of resistance, they say. “This year they prevented us from harvesting about 2,000 olive trees,” R. says again, on behalf of everyone. A big blow to the already difficult family economies during this time of war. “The settlers even tried to steal our donkeys, but they couldn’t do it.”

The story of R.’s family is the story of now more and more Palestinians, who since Oct. 7 are experiencing even more harassment, violence, and land theft than since the beginning of the 1967 occupation.

According to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Israel has confiscated 52,000 dunams in one year (1 dunams=1000 square meters, 1/10th of a hectare). This is a huge number, compounded by the new annexations declared in recent weeks. In fact, in a single day, Finance Minister Bazalel Smotrich announced the confiscation of 24,000 dunams declaring them “state lands.” This is the largest confiscation ever, covering more than half of the hectares Israel has taken since the Oslo Accords in 1993. Added to it are the 25,000 dunams that were confiscated under the pretext of changing the boundaries of nature reserves, plus the 1,233 dunams confiscated for “military purposes.” Israel’s “practice” of self-declared “state” lands had been discontinued in 1992, until Netanyhahu’s first government resurrected it in 1998. Since then, until Oct. 7, 2023, confiscations had been periodic until reaching the figure of 40 thousand dunams.

Instead, over the past 14 months, it seems that the government has been racing in grabbing as much land as possible. The goal is clear, and the various ministers in Tel Aviv have openly stated it: to create corridors between settlements, build new ones, annex the West Bank and thus fight attempts to build a Palestinian state. A goal Israel has always had, but it is experiencing an unprecedented acceleration. “2025 will be the year of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria,” Smotrich wrote on X, using the name Israel gives to this part of Palestine. Ministers in Tel Aviv want to take advantage of Trump’s presidency, and perhaps the now clear international inaction, to carry out one of their plans for the creation of Greater Israel: the disappearance of the West Bank as such. Starting with the already announced divestment of the Civil Administration in the West Bank and the transfer of its powers directly into the hands of Israeli ministries.

According to the Israeli organization PeaceNow there are at least 43 new outposts built since October 7 throughout the region, and 5 new colonies. 70 outposts – illegal under Israeli law itself – legalized, plus 3 others that have been designated “neighborhoods” of nearby colonies. New settlements also legalized inside the city of Hebron. Settlement of the territory is also taking place thanks to the dozens of kilometers of roads to connect the settlements that have been approved, with funding of more than 7 billion shekels. About 450 million furthermore the shekels promised for “projects” in the settlements and outposts to encourage the arrival of new settlers.

While Palestinians are effectively prevented from building new homes, thanks in part to the definition of many lands as “military zones” or “nature reserves,” the Tel Aviv government has authorized the construction of 8,861 new housing units in the colonies. Simultaneously through settler and military violence, there are at least 277 Palestinian families (about 1630 individuals) and between 19 and 28 entire Bedouin communities that have been forced off their land. Threats, fires, theft of livestock, sabotage to livelihoods and violence of various kinds have indeed escalated in many areas of the West Bank (while this was already the norm in many areas even before Oct 7). Especially since Israel has given the settlers a green light and given them thousands of weapons, effectively promising impunity for their actions. There have been 16,663 attacks on Palestinian land and property since Oct. 7.

At least 900 homes have been demolished, not counting the hundreds and hundreds of homes destroyed in military raids on camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas and Nablus.
The West Bank is undergoing an unprecedented direct attack. On Dec. 15, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates also expressed deep concern over Israel’s recent escalation of unilateral and illegal actions in the occupied West Bank aimed at “intensifying and expanding ethnic cleansing and gradual annexation.” He called on the international community to implement its resolutions, particularly U.N. Security Council Resolution 2735 and the U.N. General Assembly decision adopting the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.
“Resolving the Palestinian issue and ending the occupation is the only way to achieve security, stability and prosperity for the region and the world,” he reiterated. In the hope that someone will act.

The Subcommittee for Judea and Samaria, chaired by MK Tzvi Sukkot (Religious Zionism), convened for a debate on the “Inflammatory activity by activists in Judea and Samaria whose center of life is not in Judea and Samaria.”

The following was published on March 12, 2024 Knesset News on the official website of the Israeli parliament:

Twenty-Fifth Knesset, Second Session, Summer Recess

Knesset News: Judea and Samaria Subcommittee Chair MK Sukkot: Those who create violence are radical left-wing anarchists who harass IDF soldiers and heroic settlers; MK Michaeli: Outrageous attempt to present an opposite and completely false reality

The Subcommittee for Judea and Samaria, chaired by MK Tzvi Sukkot (Religious Zionism), convened on Tuesday for a debate on the topic of “Inflammatory activity by activists in Judea and Samaria whose center of life is not in Judea and Samaria.”

At the start of the debate, Subcommittee Chair MK Sukkot said, “We are still in the midst of a fierce war. In order to win the war, we have to do many things—to fight on the military front, to take action on the diplomatic front, to settle, to pray. For the military victory to arrive, we have to remove everything that interferes with it. We can’t win without fighting against those who are doing everything they can to interfere with our justified war.

“That is the reason we have convened today, in the middle of the war, to discuss the issue of the anarchists. So much unnecessary verbiage has been uttered in the past about ‘settler violence,’ but people have not yet dealt here, in this House, with those who truly create a great deal of severe violence in Judea and Samaria—radical, anarchist left-wing activists who harass the IDF soldiers and heroic settlers. This is a scourge, and we are here to deal with it. I believe that after eradicating this malady, we will be one important step closer to the important victory,” said MK Sukkot.

MK Gilad Kariv (Labor): “For any person who employs violence, the law enforcement agencies should provide a response. But that is completely unrelated to the pointless political debate that is being conducted here. It’s clear to everyone that this debate is not serious. The committee chair’s introduction attests to the purpose of this debate. It is not to discuss a problem that exists on the ground, but rather to turn around the reality and continue to obscure the real phenomenon on the ground, which is that radical parts of the settler public, which are a numerical minority among [the settlers], have cast off the yoke of Israeli law.

“If there is a phenomenon that should be dealt with beyond the war against terrorism, it is the violence of these fringe elements, which receive a tailwind from the establishment that is not willing to look reality in the eye. The human rights activists perform an important role, and if there is anyone that is interfering with the IDF it is the extremist elements among the settlers,” said MK Kariv.

MK Ariel Kallner (Likud): “Our war over this land in general and Judea and Samaria in particular is [facing] a pincer movement. On one hand, the vicious Arab terrorism, operating on a daily basis, and on the other, we have this problem of anarchists, fringe elements from Israel and around the world, who come to the region in order to stir up the situation on the ground. These people are antisemites, for all intents and purposes, and supporters of terrorism.”

MK Merav Michaeli (Labor): “There is a basic misunderstanding here. I have news for many people—this is not inside the State of Israel; Judea and Samaria is not part of the State of Israel. There is a world of sovereignty, a legal world, and in this world, Judea and Samaria is not part of the State of Israel. There are elements who are trying to create activity on the ground, as if this were part of the State of Israel’s territory, and they are causing significant harm not only to the Palestinian residents but also to the security forces on the ground. I am talking about nationalist criminals.

“You are conducting a debate that is designed to create a psychological manipulation against a public that is fighting for the image and values of the Zionist State of Israel. Nationalist crime threatens the State of Israel, and the security forces say this constantly. This is an outrageous attempt to present an opposite and completely false reality, which is being done by the same violence that you are backing,” said MK Michaeli.

MK Limor Sonn Har Melech (Otzma Yehudit): “The State of Israel is engaged in an existential struggle over our very life here, and there are people who, in an insane and delusional manner, enable a phenomenon that could not exist anywhere else. These people come here under the guise of tourists. We have to create a body that will take the lead on eradicating this phenomenon, which has very dangerous ramifications and aspects for the security of the State of Israel’s citizens. Such a phenomenon would not be permitted in any sane country.”

David Elhayani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council: “There is an organized, financed and orchestrated group of people, the sole purpose of which is to create flashpoints of friction in order to inflame the situation on the ground and besmirch the State of Israel. Since October alone, there have been 70 incidents of friction. Each such incident compels the security forces, instead of guarding the settlers in this sensitive period, to scurry between the flashpoints of friction.”

Cmdr. Avishai Mualem of the Judea and Samaria District Police said that as far as he was concerned, there was no difference between lawbreakers, regardless of gender, religion, race or nationality. He said, “Since October 7 there are statistics showing a 50 percent decrease in Jewish nationalist crime versus last year—270 from the start of the warfare until today, versus 527 last year. In 2023, 63 administrative orders were issued, including 16 administrative detention orders, against right-wing activists, for attacking Palestinians and torching Palestinian vehicles.

“Since the start of the war there has been an increase in the number of cases and complaints by Palestinians and anarchists; 191 cases were opened, of which 90 proved to be false complaints, in the southern Hebron hills sector. Most of the complaints are deliberate complaints from radical left-wing organizations which are situated in Tel Aviv and announce that there is violence by right-wing activists. In the Jordan Valley sector, we are talking about 70 incidents, of which 50 percent proved to be false complaints,” said Cmdr. Mualem.

After the open part of the debate, the committee conducted the classified portion, in which the committee members heard additional data, mapped the gaps and examined courses of action for expanding the tools for coping with the phenomenon and strengthening coordination between the different agencies.

Subcommittee Chair MK Sukkot announced that he intended to conduct a follow-up debate within the coming month.

Dissonance in Jerusalem

Jerusalem was originally split in two in 1948, the year of The Nakba, when Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from much of their ancestral land and the State of Israel was created, stealing pieces of the city for the settlement of newly arriving Jewish people. That original land grab has since grown through an illegal annexation and ongoing occupation of east Jerusalem. The Old City, the location of numerous holy sites relevant to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, is surrounded by an Ottoman aged wall that is often put to its use in constraining entry into the Old City by the Israeli Army and police. Al-Aqsa stands tenuously on the inside of the wall, while many of its worshipers live on the other side. The sentiment is that extremist, right wing, Jewish Israelis, and their empire, want to demolish the mosque and build a temple in its place.

Map of Old City of Jerusalem, from Jerusalem Story

As we walked down the warmly lit Via Dolorosa on December 8th, we buzzed with anticipation and shared stories of miracles in our own lives, sprinkled with small Arabic lessons; katir, a lot, sa’a ki, yummy, ektalal, occupation. Tears streamed down my face as I touched the ancient stones and walked along the same path of the infamous martyr. I used the ends of my head scarf to wipe my cheeks and tuck myself underneath its warmth. My body was tense with anticipation of hundreds of right wing, jewish extremists charging towards Al-Aqsa, a literal, and symbol of, land they wish to digest.

By the end of the last prayer for the day, around 6:30pm, the streets were empty aside from a few families still briskly walking to get home. It was clear that tonight was not the night to be alone outside the mosque. We encountered a family of 3 carrying copious amounts of oranges in a baby stroller and by hand. One of us offered to help and we were quickly swept back to their house through alleyways and over barricades. The Matriarch of the family peeled oranges and her daughter poured coffee as she explained how she tries to go every Friday to pray, but is always turned away by the Israeli military. She shook her head and closed her eyes as she recounted the tear gas they sprayed while she attempted to pray. I asked if she continues to go, even though she has been denied and she proudly replied “yes, of course”. We parted with sentiments of strength, gratitude, and sumud (resilience).

As we left the forcibly silent Muslim quarter, we were bombarded by celebration, carelessness, and isolation just a few blocks over in a Jewish Neighborhood. People danced in the streets and young men laughed as they walked with assault rifles slung around their necks.

Young men walking through West Jerusalem. Credit: ISM

We all clenched our jaws, silenced our Arabic lessons, and I lowered my scarf to reveal my curls in a hopes to blend in until we swiftly arrived at our home base, astonished by the dissonance; just down the road, their neighbors, were confined to their homes for fear of destruction and extermination.

I was surprised by my shock. Living in the US supplies countless moments of dissonance among neighbors. From the Delmar Divide in St Louis to Skid Row to Chelsea’s 10th ave in NY, we watch as people are displaced, sanctioned, and murdered and their neighbors, with windows facing theirs, feast and dance on the graves of the community they pushed out. I had the same feeling of disappointment and anger walking through that Jewish neighborhood as I do when I walk to visit friends along the Delmar Divide and remember the names of the families that once lived on the south side of the street.

On Monday December 11th there is a call to action for everyone to stop, a total strike. For everyone, around the world to be faced with the stagnation of a mandated ceasefire and to feel the destruction of an entire people. To turn that rage into action.

Far Right Settler March Demanding Control of Al Aqsa Mosque Disbanded for Inciting Violence

8 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Occupied East Jerusalem

Marking the first night of Hanukkah, on December 7, around 150 ultra-nationalist, Kahane terrorist linked extremist settlers demanding “full Jewish control” of Al Aqsa Mosque shouted racist abuse and waved banners of violent incitement against Al Aqsa Mosque. The violent-extremist group was granted authorization to march through the Muslim Quarter, but was stopped before it could start when Israeli police confronted the mob for violating the terms of its protest permit and inciting violence. Signs calling for the bulldozer-demolition of Al Aqsa, one of the holiest structures in Islam, were reportedly confiscated.

Clashes between Israeli police and far-right activists at a march through Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday night. Credit: Olivier Fitoussi.

Permission was granted on the eve of the event, against every indication that march organizers would not be following the tepid ‘restrictions’ placed on the march including an attendance cap and disallowance of the route reaching the holy site. Extremist, settler-colonial citizen forces are granted the right to murder and showered with arms by their government with which to do so. But under pressure through public outcry against the provocative event, occupation police dispersed the demonstration.

Far right march organizers had circulated a declaration through social media linking the events in Gaza with continued zionist incitement to wrest control of Al Aqsa from the Islamic Endowment waqf. Extremist settlers, instead, want to place it under the control of the same occupying force which is committing daily atrocities against occupied and besieged Palestinians, atrocities which have shocked the world.

The Haram Al-Sharif and the Al Aqsa Mosque, was the first place Muslims prayed toward and remains a sacred site of great importance in Islam. It has long been a flashpoint for far right extremist settler and occupation forces’ violence and antagonization of Palestinians through continuous incursions; its majesty the backdrop of the repeated and arbitrary denial of access to Muslims.

Across a timeline littered with incursions into the area, May saw hundreds of settlers marking “Flag Day” by rampaging through occupied East Jerusalem where soldier and settler alike hurled racial insults and assaulted Palestinians in the area. And in early October, far-right extremists repeatedly stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque compound coinciding with the Jewish Sukkot seven day pilgrimage festival. Incited by Jewish ultra-nationalist groups, extremist settlers continued an antagonistic campaign of repeated trampling of the courtyard at the holy site even as faithful Palestinians were being violently denied entry, an arbitrary age-restriction which is ongoing.

Al Aqsa Compound stormed by extremist settlers on October 5, 2023. photo credit: The New Arab.

Al-Aqsa’s administrative workers, including Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, one of Al Aqsa’s main Imams, have endured repeated targeting. Sheikh Sabri has faced terrorist death threats by settler vigilantes, a raid of his home to announce an arbitrary travel ban against him, and an outrageous eviction and notice of impending demolition of his home just days ago. This home demolition is especially egregious because it involves the collective punishment of 100 Palestinians who also live in separate homes inside the threatened structure.

People of all faiths, including Palestinian Muslims, have an inalienable right, echoed in OCHA’s International Standards article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of freedom from religious-based discrimination. Palestinians regularly attempt to reach Al Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers, but are blocked by Israeli barricades, police, and military who attack the worshippers while they are praying week after week. Human rights defenders holding a non-violent presence to document the restriction, assault, and harassment of Palestinian Muslims at their holy site, have had their phones and passports confiscated and have been forced from the site by occupation soldiers. Despite these provocations, and the recent jailing and forced deportation of a Belgian human rights defender while documenting an illegal home demolition, international human rights defenders continue to document and intervene in human rights violations.

The violent, extremist settler march was an incitement to further violence and marginalization of indigenous Palestinians and the obscene violation of a holy site meant to be a welcoming sanctuary to those whispering prayers within its walls. The organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, blueprints the odds between the Jewish faith and this supremacist Zionist ideology; “Zionist interpretations of history taught us that Jewish people are alone, that to remedy the harms of antisemitism we must think of ourselves as always under attack and that we cannot trust others. It teaches us fear, and that the best response to fear is a bigger gun, a taller wall, a more humiliating checkpoint.” Their statements and demonstrations are part of a growing worldwide Jewish resistance to occupation, apartheid and the systematic dehumanization which maintains them. “Rather than accept the inevitability of occupation and dispossession, we choose a different path. We learn from the anti-Zionist Jews who came before us, and know that as long as Zionism has existed, so has Jewish dissent to it.”

Many Palestinian families remember the stories of their great grandparents who recall how Palestinian Arab and Jewish neighbors babysat for each other and were not only at peace, but close friends, prior to the imposition of settler-colonialism. Palestine, “the land of barakah” (the land of blessings, peace, salvation, liberation, and spiritual presence) and site of the stories that have shaped so many Jewish, Christian, and Muslim lives is experiencing a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. The Al Aqsa Mosque, the soul of Jerusalem, is at the epicenter of the fate of this land and its people, with reverberations around the world; a crossroads between liberatory survival and genocidal desolation, of human rights and the restriction thereof, justice and justice denied.

Masafer Yatta Families Displaced Following Home Demolitions

7 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Masafer Yatta, Occupied West Bank

In just over one week, several Palestinian family homes were relegated to fields of rubble after occupation army bulldozers invaded several villages including al Deirat, Umm Lasafa and Umm Qissa. The demolitions left Palestinian children and their families homeless as the targeted destruction and expulsion of Masafer Yatta communities continues to accelerate.

The ruins of a demolished family home in Masafer Yatta. Photo Credit: BNN

On December 6, Occupation forces took the opportunity to demolish a sheep barn in Umm Qissa overnight during their destructive incursion in furtherance of the attacks on the shepherding and farming infrastructure of Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills. Coupled with the violent raids, antagonism and invasion of Palestinian homes by extremist ideological settlers, the pattern of harassment towards the achievement of a land ethnically cleansed of indigenous Palestinians grinds forth.

Taking advantage of the gap in coverage with the world’s eyes on the genocide in Gaza, and the isolated nature of the villages of Masafer Yatta, the occupation army has enabled and participated in the increasing momentum of settler terrorist attacks along with the destruction of residences to force Palestinian expulsion.

On December 3, settler extremists invaded Esfay, Maghayir Al-Abid and At-Tuba, leaving behind them the destroyed water network of a wide swathe of villagers of the South Hebron Hills communities. With surgical exacting, occupation forces are removing all elements of a people’s ability to exist; from the slashing of water cisterns to the destruction of water flow pipes, a community without water cannot survive. In image after image filtering out of the embattled villages, homes are seen crashing down under the gears of army-driven bulldozers while armed IOF stand guarding the destruction from intervention.

Credit: OCHA data on demolition and displacement in the West Bank. 12/03

On OCHA’s data on demolition and displacement in the West Bank website rolling figures which “reflect the demolition of Palestinian-owned structures and the resulting displacement of people from their homes across the West Bank since 2009” are updated every 48 hours. The numbers continue to grow and the project of colonial expansion continues to saturate the occupied West Bank.