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Many West Bank Palestinians Are Being Forced Out of Their Villages. Is My Family Next?

A woman wearing a dress and hijab walks in front of a small building, surrounded by a mostly barren, dusty landscape.
Zuhour Muhammad Awad, the author’s grandmother, walking in the village of Tuba in May 2021. Ms. Awad says she was born in Tuba in 1948. She has spent her life caring for herds of sheep and making cheese and yogurt. (Emily Glick)

Mr. Awad is a Palestinian writer living in the West Bank.

I was born in February 1998 in Tuba, a rural shepherding community of 80 Palestinian residents in the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank, where my family has lived for generations. Over the years we have suffered repeated attacks by Israeli settlers, part of an ongoing campaign to remove us from our land. Still, nothing prepared me for what our life has become since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. In the last six weeks, the raids and harassment by settlers have become so intense that I do not know how much longer I and the other members of my community will be able to live here.

Under the cover of war, settlers have been storming villages in the West Bank, threatening Palestinians and destroying their homes and their livelihoods. International attention has been mostly focused on the atrocities in Israel and in Gaza, including the internal displacement of more than half of the population of the Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank, increasingly violent assaults on villages have forced at least 16 Palestinian communitiesmore than 1,000 people — to flee their homes since Oct. 7. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, settlers have attacked Palestinians in more than 250 incidents in the West Bank. So far, 200 Palestinians have been killed, eight by settlers and the others during clashes with Israeli forces.

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In my village and in other villages around us, settlers have been raiding homes and harassing us relentlessly, sometimes multiple times a day. Less than a week into the war, according to a video published by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, an armed settler came into At-Tuwani village in the South Hebron Hills, approached a group of unarmed Palestinians walking after Friday Prayers and shot one of them in the abdomen from point-blank range. Ten minutes down the road, in Susiya, villagers said that settlers threatened to shoot residents if they did not evacuate their homes within 24 hours. On Oct. 30, settlers set fire to several homes in Khirbet a-Safai, a village less than a mile east of Tuba. And residents in the neighboring village to the west, Umm al-Khair, told human rights activists that armed settlers in uniform held people there at gunpoint and forced them to condemn Hamas and promise to raise Israeli flags in the village or they would be murdered.

For those of us in Tuba, this wave of attacks is part of a long string of attempts to force us to leave our homes. And it’s not only the settlers who want us out: Successive Israeli governments have also tried to get rid of us over the last decades.

The author, Ali Awad, hands his 3-year-old cousin a baby sheep in January.

In the early 1980s, our village, along with a group of others in an area called Masafer Yatta, was designated by the military as Firing Zone 918, land that Israel decided it wanted for training its forces (A government document indicates that there was an intention to displace residents living in the area). We have been fighting for the right to remain on our land ever since. We live in Area C of the West Bank, which means the Israeli military has complete civil and security control over our lives. Israel has tried various tactics to get us to leave, including enacting policies that prevent us from building homes in our own village and not allowing us to be connected to the main electrical grid or water infrastructure.

Sometimes it’s been much less subtle: In November 1999, when I was a year old, the Israeli military loaded all of Tuba’s residents and livestock onto trucks and dumped us on the side of the road several miles away. We spent the following months crowded in makeshift tents, fighting to shelter ourselves and our livestock from the cold winter rain. We were eventually allowed to return to our village “temporarily,” pending a final court decision.

Settlers from the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on — built near Tuba and partly on private Palestinian land not long after we returned — have done their share as well. In 2002, they cut off the main road that connected Tuba to the surrounding villages, including the children’s closest school and the city of Yatta, where we buy all of our food and medical supplies.

Settlers have also resorted to violence, some directed at my own family. We believe it was nearby settlers who stabbed my uncle, attacked my cousins with stones, and, as I’ve written before, set fire to a year’s worth of food for our flocks of sheep.

Throughout it all, we had been awaiting the final ruling from the Israeli high court about whether the Israeli military could force us to evacuate. Then, last year, the court ruled in favor of the state, allowing Israel to evict about 1,200 Palestinians, including those in my village. We have remained steadfast in the face of this pressure and refuse to abandon our land and our traditional way of life. But in recent weeks, attacks by settlers have rattled our resolve.

We have always felt that the work of the military, which demolishes our houses and prevents our ability to move freely, was intimately intertwined with and reinforced by harassment from settlers. However, since the war started more than a month ago, the settlers and soldiers in the region seemed to have fused into one entity, ending whatever semblance of distance existed between these two violent systems. Settlers whom we recognize from years of harassment in our villages have suddenly become soldiers, as reservists or as part of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s civilian security teams. Army reservists who are new to the area are apparently now taking their orders from local settler-soldiers or security teams. Together they patrol our communities with their M16s and threaten anyone who tries to bring his flock to graze or leave the village for work or errands.

In Tuba, as in nearby villages, settlers have also targeted the water systems and solar panels we have built and are entirely dependent on, as if to remind us of our vulnerability. They are clearly taking advantage of this moment to make our lives unlivable, and we have no reason to believe that, especially during a state of war, any of the violence we are experiencing in our communities will slow or stop soon. Local Israeli authorities say they are investigating some of the more violent attacks, including the killings, but they are showing no signs of being able to control them, and in fact, government ministers are fanning the flames.

In the last five weeks alone, residents from five other villages in the South Hebron Hills have been forced to pack up and flee from their homes. If the situation doesn’t change, I worry that Tuba will be next. As a letter signed by 30 Israeli human rights NGOs recently stated: “The only way to stop this forcible transfer in the West Bank is a clear, strong and direct intervention by the international community.”

Since I can remember, life in Tuba has been difficult, but it has also always been full of beauty and calm. It is the life my family has known for generations, and the traditional lifestyle we live is deeply connected to the land around us and the animals we care for. The hillsides are stamped with our footsteps and those of our flocks, the rocks on the top of the hill neatly arranged so we can watch the sunset over the desert. But the fear we feel, in Tuba and across Area C, now hangs heavy over this landscape. I don’t know if we will be able to stand it.

    More on Israel and Palestinian territories

    Opinion | Serge Schmemann
    Violence by West Bank Settlers Cannot Be Ignored
    Nov. 11, 2023

    Opinion | Michael Sfard
    Israel Is Silencing Internal Critics
    Nov. 2, 2023

Ali Awad is a community organizer and journalist living in Tuba, in the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank.

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Rainwater is the property of Israel

Rainwater is the property of Israel
byu/temporary_staying inlostgeneration

“Israel even controls the collection of rain water throughout most of the West Bank, and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army.” | @amnesty report: The Occupation of Water https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/
 

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 42

Mondoweiss

Communications blackout obscures full picture of Israel’s devastation in Gaza

Israel’s purported proof of Hamas command center under al-Shifa hospital is seen as ‘anticlimactic’ as bombardment continues across the Gaza Strip, leaving only 4 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants with access to safe drinking water.

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Casualties

  • 11,470 killed*, including 4,707 children, and more than 29,000 wounded in Gaza
  • 197 Palestinians killed and 2,750 injured in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
  • Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,200

*This figure covers the casualties from October 7 to November 16. 

Key Developments

  • Due to the breakdown of communication services in northern Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health says it has been facing “significant difficulties” in updating its data regarding death tolls for the past week. New numbers issued cannot take into account the full scope of devastation in northern Gaza and Gaza City, where untold numbers of dead are unable to be retrieved from the rubble given the presence of Israeli forces, with Israeli snipers reportedly shooting at anyone in the streets.
  • Israeli forces continue to occupy al-Shifa hospital, as its purported proof of Hamas command center lying under the medical complex fails to convince
  • Other hospitals in Gaza have also come under fire, amid continued Israeli airstrikes in both northern and southern Gaza
  • Heads of major U.N. humanitarian agencies reject “unilateral” Israeli push for so-called ‘safe zones’ in Gaza
  • Paltel says lack of electricity amid fuel shortages has led to a total telecommunications blackout across the Gaza Strip
  • Telecom shutdown means international aid isn’t entering the Gaza Strip on Friday, UNRWA says, due to impossibility of coordination
  • World Food Program warns of “immediate possibility of starvation” in Gaza
  • Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics meanwhile says only 4 percent of people in Gaza currently have access to safe drinking water 
  • At least five Palestinians killed in the West Bank — three in Jenin and two in Hebron — amid confrontations between Palestinian fighters and Israeli forces
  • Israeli forces detain 35 Palestinians across the West Bank overnight
  • Israeli forces fire tear gas at Palestinians seeking to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque 
  • Armed man is arrested near the Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan for allegedly planning an attack  — a day after an alleged attack against the Israeli embassy in Japan. 
  • Jordan says it won’t sign a deal that had planned for Amman to provide energy to Israeli in exchange for water due to the “retaliatory barbarism carried out by Israel” in Gaza
  • The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sues the state of Florida over its ban of pro-Palestinian student groups, calling the move a “dangerous… attack on free speech.”
  • The International Center of Justice for Palestinians issues a notice of intention to seek prosecution of Canadian politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for “complicity in war crimes in Gaza.” 
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Al-Shifa’ Hospital remains occupied by Israeli army 

War rages on in Gaza, and the situation at Al-Shifa’ hospital in Gaza City continues to be at the center of attention. Palestinian news agency WAFA says thousands of medical staff, patients, and civilians who had taken refuge in the biggest medical complex in the besieged Gaza Strip have been taken “hostage” by Israeli forces, which have seized Al-Shifa’ since Wednesday over claims that the hospital lies above an underground Hamas command center.

Israeli forces have encircled the hospital with tanks, bulldozers, and snipers for more than a week and have stormed the premises at least three times in as many days, reportedly forcing staff and civilians to strip naked, interrogating and detaining a number of Palestinians, many whose whereabouts are currently unknown, as well as destroying medical equipment. Doctors at Al-Shifa’ said Israeli soldiers had also taken a number of bodies of deceased patients to an unknown location.

The director of Al-Shifa’ told Al Jazeera on Friday that 22 people had died in the hospital overnight. It remained unclear whether an earlier statement by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, which said some 40 patients, including three premature babies, had died at Al Shifa’ since November 11, included these 22.

The bodies of two Israeli hostages — identified as Noa Marciano, 19, and Yehudit Weiss, 65 — captured by Palestinian armed resistance groups on October 7 were retrieved by Israeli forces in the vicinity of Al-Shifa’’, with both Hamas and Israel accusing the other of being behind their deaths.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in an interview with CBS on Thursday that Israel had been “unsuccessful” in sparing civilians but blamed Hamas for making Israel kill thousands of Palestinian children.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Saudi Arabia strongly condemned the attack on Al-Shifa’ on Thursday, with the OIC calling the “collective punishment and genocide perpetrated against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip […] a war crime under international humanitarian law.”

Amid growing international questioning over Israel’s repeated targeting of hospitals in Gaza in contravention of international law, Tel Aviv has gone into overdrive seeking to prove that Al-Shifa’ is used as a military base — producing some questionable evidence that has been debunked, including a supposed list of names of Hamas guards on duty that turned out to be a calendar with the names of the week. Al Jazeera has also cast doubts on claims that stashes of weapons were found beside an MRI machine, pointing out that the magnetic field of such machines means they are an unlikely hiding spot for any metal objects. Even Israeli media has raised questions about the “anticlimax” of Israeli forces’ raid on Al-Shifa’.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called on Friday for an international investigation into Israel’s “absurd claims” about Al-Shifa’. Israel has repeatedly questioned the credibility of Palestinian reports from within the Gaza Strip, all while restricting entrance to foreign observers and journalists and targeting the small Palestinian territory’s telecommunications network. Paltel Group, the largest provider of telecom services in Palestine, announced on Thursday evening that all landline, mobile, and internet services were disrupted across the Gaza Strip due to electricity shortages.

“The Israeli army’s insistence on barring the media, international organisations, health officials, and non-governmental organisations’ presence in hospitals during the raids should raise great concern […]  and casts doubt on any army narrative,” Euro-Med Monitor wrote. “Hospitals are not battlegrounds.”

While the Israeli army claims it is “close to dismantling” Hamas in northern Gaza, and claimed to have killed a former senior Fatah operative, Khaled Abu Halal, on Friday, Palestinian armed resistance groups said on Telegram that fierce fighting was ongoing in Gaza City, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun, and that a number of Israeli soldiers had been killed.

Humanitarian situation further devolves as Israeli strikes continue pummeling Gaza

Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombardments continued unabated. WAFA news agency reported deadly airstrikes since Thursday in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Radwan, Tuffah, Shujaa’ya, and Yafa Street in Gaza City, as well as Nuseirat and Jabalia refugee camps. At least 21 people were killed in several strikes across Jabalia, with Al Jazeera reporting that people were digging through the rubble “with bare hands” searching for survivors.

Meanwhile, a school in the southern Gaza City neighborhood of al-Zaytoun was also hit, Al Jazeera reported.

Israeli airstrikes also hit southern Gaza, including Rafah and Khan Younis, which Israel has continued to claim is a “safe zone” Palestinians should flee to to escape the combat zone in northern and central Gaza.

The strikes in Khan Younis took place in the vicinity of al-Nasr hospital, in yet another endangering of medical facilities in Gaza, more than two-thirds of which have gone out of service. Israeli tanks were reportedly surrounding Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, preventing ambulances from going out to rescue any wounded, while seven staff members at the Jordanian Field Hospital were injured in a strike.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has meanwhile reported more than 1,000 Israeli strikes with white phosphorus in the span of 40 days.

Humanitarian agencies and Palestinian organizations continue to raise the alarm about the calamitous situation in Gaza, with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics saying that Palestinians in Gaza had gone from using 82.7 liters of water per person per day before October 7 to between one to three liters per day now, adding that only 4 percent of people in Gaza are believed to currently have access to clean water.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) meanwhile said on Friday that civilians faced the “immediate possibility of starvation” in Gaza. UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, reported aid would not cross from Egypt into Gaza on Friday, as the breakdown of communication networks prevented the coordination of humanitarian convoys.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told journalists on Thursday that he believed there was “a deliberate attempt to strangle our operation and paralyse the UNRWA operation,” adding that Israel’s continued refusal to allow the entry of fuel into Gaza threatened all humanitarian operations there.

The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC),  the highest-level humanitarian coordination platform of the U.N., issued a statement on Thursday saying the leaders of the United Nations’ major agencies would not take part in “unilateral proposals to create ‘safe zones’” in Gaza — a rebuke of Israel’s ongoing pressure to push more and more civilians into a smaller and smaller portion of the already tiny Gaza Strip, without providing them actual safety.

“Under the prevalent conditions, proposals to unilaterally create ‘safe zones’ in Gaza risk creating harm for civilians, including large-scale loss of life, and must be rejected. Without the right conditions, concentrating civilians in such zones in the context of active hostilities can raise the risk of attack and additional harm,” the statement said. “No ‘safe zone’ is truly safe when it is declared unilaterally or enforced by the presence of armed forces.”

Five Palestinians killed in the West Bank

Violence continued across the occupied West Bank overnight, with at least three Palestinian fighters confirmed to have been killed by Israeli forces during fierce armed confrontations in the flashpoint Jenin refugee camp.

Four of the Jenin area’s five hospitals were reportedly out of service as Israeli forces besieged Ibn Sina hospital and interrogated staff.

Two more Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces at one of the entrances to the city of Hebron on Friday morning. Israeli forces claimed the two Palestinians had fired at soldiers, while reporting no injuries on the Israeli side.

This comes a day after three Palestinians killed one Israeli soldier and wounded five others at a Bethlehem-area checkpoint before being themselves killed.

At least five Palestinians, including two children, were wounded by Israeli forces in the past day in Masafer Yatta, Deir Nidham, and Beita. Meanwhile, at least 35 Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces across the occupied West Bank overnight — 28 of them in Nilin, a village well known for its regular anti-occupation protests.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli forces fired tear gas at worshippers seeking to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque, newspaper Al-Quds reported.

Meanwhile, two 14-year-old Palestinian citizens of Israel from the town of Umm al-Fahm were charged with attempted murder of an Israeli soldier on Friday.

While Palestinian armed groups have continued to shoot rockets from Gaza into areas in southern Israel, the Lebanese Hezbollah movement has claimed to have hit a dozen locations in northern Israel since Thursday. Israeli forces have struck a number of areas in southern Lebanon, L’Orient Today reported.

In Israel, Netanyahu reportedly canceled a visit to visit wounded soldiers in a Tel Aviv hospital, with Ynet reporting that the decision was likely due to concerns that “he would be met by protests from the families of the wounded,” as was the case with Transportation Minister Miri Regev. Thousands of Israelis have been marchingfor the past three days, calling for the release of hostages held in Gaza, with another protest planned outside the Prime Minister’s Office on Saturday. Some families of hostages have expressed anger at the Israeli government for seemingly not prioritizing the safe return of their loved ones, while opposition leader Yair Lapid has publicly called on Netanyahu to resign because the public has lost trust in him.


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Israel Blocks Palestinian Americans From Entering From West Bank

The move is an apparent violation of a recent agreement that says citizens from the United States and Israel can travel to the other nation without a visa.

A white vehicle drives on a road.
The West Bank in October. Palestinian-Americans have faced difficulties traveling to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Eileen Sullivan, Edward Wong and

Eileen Sullivan and Edward Wong reported from Washington, and Patrick Kingsley from Jerusalem.

Israel is preventing Palestinian Americans from entering the country from the West Bank, an apparent violation of a recent agreement in which citizens from the United States and Israel can travel to the other nation without a visa.

The Homeland Security and State Departments, which manage the program, said American officials were trying to resolve the issue.

“U.S. government officials are working with the government of Israel to address reports of Americans facing issues in traveling to and flying out of Ben-Gurion Airport,” said Erin Heeter, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.

The arrangement, announced in late September, before the war began, was part of a larger effort toward improving relations between the two countries. At the time, President Biden was making a push to broker a diplomatic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Under the visa waiver program, Israel would lift restrictions on Palestinian Americans and other Americans of Arab or Muslim descent, easing the way for them to travel to and from Palestinian territories.

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For decades, Palestinian Americans have faced difficulties traveling to the Israeli-occupied West Bank to see family and friends or to do humanitarian work. They have been forced to first travel to Jordan, which shares a border with the territory. They typically fly in and out of the Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, the capital of Jordan, rather than entering or leaving from Tel Aviv.

American officials insisted that the agreement would change that. But shortly after Israel’s inclusion in the program was announced, Hamas carried out a deadly attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and ignited an Israeli invasion of Gaza as well as a surge of violence in the West Bank.

Israel, citing security reasons, further restricted the movements of Palestinians in the West Bank, whether they hold an American passport or not. Palestinian Americans found themselves unable to cross in or out of Israel at that border.

It was an early test to an agreement that some had doubted Israel would uphold.

“Of course, everybody got excited about this new regulation, allowing us to go through Ben-Gurion because of our citizenship,” said Fidah Mousa, a Palestinian American who lives in the West Bank.

During a pilot period over the summer, more than 100,000 U.S. citizens, including tens of thousands of Palestinian Americans, were able to travel to Israel without a visa. At the time, Ms. Mousa purchased a ticket to fly out of Tel Aviv to return to the United States in October to attend her daughter’s wedding.

“Deep down, I didn’t think it was going to last,” she said of the equal treatment.

Days after the Oct. 7 attack, Ms. Mousa said her employer, an international nongovernment organization, sent her updates about Israel’s closure of checkpoints to Palestinian Americans seeking to enter from the West Bank.

Inam Mansor, a Palestinian American lawyer who lives in the West Bank, said she had been told by an Israeli border official on Sunday that the visa privilege for Palestinian Americans was no longer available.

It was precisely the situation some feared.

“Here we are in the middle of an actual crisis — being told to go” to Amman, to fly from Queen Alia International Airport, said Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, an advocacy organization. “It’s yet another example of why Israel does not belong in this program.”

Civil rights groups like the Arab American Institute raised concerns about Israel’s entry into the visa waiver program. Some Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, also expressed skepticism.

“While he understands the difficult security climate in Israel, all American citizens are guaranteed reciprocity under the visa waiver program, and he has serious concerns about this development,” said Francesca Amodeo, a spokeswoman for Mr. Van Hollen.

After the Oct. 7 attacks, the Biden administration moved up the start date of the program so Israelis fleeing the war could have an easier time entering the United States.

Asked about Palestinian Americans who were unable to leave the West Bank for Israel, State Department officials said they had been trying to help them go overland to Jordan.

“To expand the departure options for U.S. citizens in the West Bank, the State Department has begun chartering overland transportation for U.S. citizens and their immediate family members from the West Bank to Jordan,” the department said.

Separately, the department arranged charter flights from Oct. 13 to 31 to ferry American passengers out of Israel, even though commercial flights were still running. Dozens of flights destined for Washington and a few European capitals left Tel Aviv mostly empty — or in some cases, entirely empty, an American official said.

Palestinian Americans in the West Bank or in Gaza were unable to get to those flights.

Asked about the lack of passengers, the State Department acknowledged the flights “consistently departed at half capacity or less.”

Cogat, a department of Israel’s defense ministry that administers aspects of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, cited the outbreak of the war to explain why crossings in the West Bank had been closed to Palestinian residents of the territory.

“In regards to Israel’s international crossings, nothing has changed. Palestinians with U.S. citizenship continue to enter Israel with a tourist visa,” Cogat said in a statement.

“Once Hamas commenced war on Israel, the crossings from Judea and Samaria into Israel were fully closed — for security reasons,” the agency said, using the Israeli term for the West Bank. “Israel will allow the entry of Palestinians holding U.S. passports for tourism purposes through the crossings in Judea and Samaria at the end of the closure, in accordance with the agreement signed between Israel and the U.S.A.”

Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

Eileen Sullivan writes about the Department of Homeland Security with a focus on immigration and law enforcement. More about Eileen Sullivan

Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 24 years from New York, Baghdad, Beijing and Washington. He was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists for Iraq War coverage. More about Edward Wong

Patrick Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. More about Patrick Kingsley
 

November 20, 2023
Preserving Palestine Under Settler Colonialism

 

11 am CT
In support of our colleagues in Palestine, in support of the Palestinian people, and in support of justice for all people, Librarians & Archivists with Palestine (LAP) is honoured to present this roundtable featuring expert librarians, archivists and scholars, Dr. Mazna Qato, Dr. Rami Zurayk, Blair Kuntz, and Tam Rayan, to discuss the urgent need to Preserve Palestine.

Sponsored by the Middle East Librarians Association, this educational event serves as a call to information professionals to take action to protect and safeguard Palestinian cultural heritage institutions and knowledge repositories, including libraries, archives and museums, in defence of Palestinian life, land, and liberation.

Speakers will provide examples and case studies illustrating the impact of a century of theft, plunder, and destruction of Palestinian heritage, libraries, and archives under British and Israeli settler colonialism, as well as the myriad Palestinian social and grassroots efforts to counter this epistemic violence and colonial erasure.

 

November 17, 2023
Palestinian Women on WORT Radio

12 Noon – 1 pm

A Public Affair host Esty Dinur will be talking with three local Palestinian women about their families’ stories, what they understand and feel about the Israeli attacks on Gaza and the West Bank, and their hopes for the future.

Tune in to 89.9 FM or listen live online. Call in with your questions at 608-256-2001. The show will be archived if you miss it.

The Israeli public has embraced the Smotrich doctrine

The internalization of the far-right minister’s ‘Decisive Plan’ is evident in the popular support for a new ultimatum for Gaza: emigration or annihilation.

Orly Noy, +972 Magazine, November 10, 2023

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich arrives at a government conference at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, September 27, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich arrives at a government conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, September 27, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

 

In partnership with

Six years ago, Bezalel Smotrich, then a young Knesset member in his first term, published his “Decisive Plan” — a kind of “endgame” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to the far-right lawmaker, who now serves as Israel’s finance minister and the government’s West Bank overlord, the inherent contradiction between Jewish and Palestinian national aspirations does not allow for any kind of compromise, reconciliation, or partition. Instead of maintaining the illusion that a political agreement is possible, he argued, the issue must be unilaterally resolved once and for all.

The plan makes only passing references to Gaza, with Smotrich seeming content with Israel’s encagement of the enclave as an ideal solution to what he calls the “demographic challenge” posed by Palestinians’ very existence. Vis-à-vis the West Bank, however, he calls for annexing its entirety.

In the latter territory, demographic concerns will be ameliorated by offering the 3 million Palestinian residents a choice: to renounce their national aspirations and continue living on their land in an inferior status, or to emigrate abroad. If, instead, they choose to take up arms against Israel, they will be identified as terrorists and the Israeli army will set about “killing those who need to be killed.” When asked at a meeting, in which he presented his plan to religious-Zionist figures, if he also meant killing families, women, and children, Smotrich replied: “In war as in war.”

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Insofar as it has received any public attention at all, the Decisive Plan has been perceived since its publication as delusional and dangerous even among mainstream Israeli political commentators. Yet an examination of the current Israeli media and political discourse shows that, when it comes to the army’s current assault on Gaza, large parts of the public have completely internalized the logic of Smotrich’s plan.

In fact, Israeli public opinion regarding Gaza, where Smotrich’s vision is being implemented with a cruelty that even he may not have foreseen, is now even more extreme than the text of the plan itself. That’s because, in practice, Israel is removing from the agenda the first possibility on offer — of an inferior, de-Palestinianized existence — which until October 7 was most Israelis’ chosen option.

Israeli soldiers seen behind the fence of Kibbutz Be'eri, near the Israeli-Gaza fence, southern Israel. October 25, 2023. (Yossi Zamir/Flash90)

Israeli soldiers seen behind the fence of Kibbutz Be’eri, near the Israeli-Gaza fence, southern Israel. October 25, 2023. (Yossi Zamir/Flash90)

Emigration or annihilation

The utter astonishment at Hamas’ brutal attack, and the refusal to understand it in the context of decades of oppression, reflect an Israeli position that genuinely wonders why the Palestinians did not cling to their status as prisoners in Gaza, say thank you for Israel’s generosity in allowing a few thousand people to work for minimal wages on the lands from which their families were expelled, and bring their occupiers flowers.

Indeed, how many Israelis care about the situation in Gaza so long as Palestinians are not firing rockets or breaching the fence to enter our communities? Who bothered to ask what “calm” looks like in the besieged enclave? As far as most Israeli Jews are concerned, the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza should have kept their mouths shut and embraced their starvation. But today, even this option is no longer satisfactory, leaving Israelis to rally behind a new ultimatum for Gaza: emigration or annihilation.

In the current discourse, emigration is often presented as a humanitarian consideration, generously allowing Palestinian civilians to leave the area of hostilities. In reality, around three-quarters of Gaza’s population have been forcibly displaced since October 7, mainly from the north, and the Israeli army continues to bomb them in all parts of the Strip.

Alternatively, emigration is proposed in the form of plans for mass transfer of Palestinians out of the Strip, which are being seriously considered by senior Israeli officials and policymakers. For significant parts of the Israeli public, Palestinians are easier to move than furniture in a living room.

Palestinians flee their homes in Gaza City toward the southern part of the besieged Gaza Strip, November 10, 2023. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)

Palestinians flee their homes in Gaza City toward the southern part of the besieged Gaza Strip, November 10, 2023. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)

Given that expelling Gaza’s population makes perfect sense to most Israelis, the Palestinians’ refusal to submit to the might of the Israeli regime is perceived as an existential threat and a sufficient reason for their annihilation. It is true that Hamas’ horrific October 7 massacres in civilian communities violated what ought to be the scope of legitimate resistance to oppression, but the vast majority of Israelis were totally fine with snipers killing and maiming Palestinians who demonstrated en masse at the Gaza fence during the Great March of Return. In their eyes, no form of protest against the occupation is legitimate.

It is not only Smotrich’s logic that has settled in the public’s heart since October 7, but also his rhetoric. In his introduction to the Decisive Plan, Smotrich writes: “The statement that ‘terrorism derives from despair’ is a lie. Terrorism derives from hope — a hope to weaken us.” The Israeli public has similarly embraced the severing of the link between terrorism on the one hand and despair and struggle on the other; in the current climate, any attempt to even mention this connection is immediately denounced as justifying Hamas’ crimes.

The terrifying Smotrichization of the Israeli public is embodied in the total willingness to sacrifice the lives of every last Palestinian in Gaza for the ultimate victory that the far-right minister promised in his plan. It is the terrifying indifference to the astronomical number of dead children, and the complete internalization of the idea that any thought of struggle and freedom on the other side of the fence must be extinguished, no matter the human cost.

This process will not stop and cannot be stopped at the Gaza fence. Smotrich’s logic is already seeping into the state’s approach toward its own Palestinian citizens, who have been facing levels of persecution and repression that recall the military regime of 1949-66. It is no coincidence that this community’s voices are almost completely absent from the public sphere these days; they are subject to arrests and indictments for simply asserting their national identity.

In a country where posting a video of shakshuka next to a Palestinian flag leads to incarceration, the process of Smotrichization and internalization of its “decisive” logic has already been completed. The implications of this for the possibility of rehabilitating Israel’s ailing society after the war, and re-laying the foundations for the struggle for a shared society, are hard to even imagine.

A version of this article first appeared in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

Orly Noy

Orly Noy is an editor at Local Call, a political activist, and a translator of Farsi poetry and prose. She is the chair of B’Tselem’s executive board and an activist with the Balad political party. Her writing deals with the lines that intersect and define her identity as Mizrahi, a female leftist, a woman, a temporary migrant living inside a perpetual immigrant, and the constant dialogue between them.


‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 35

Tanks besiege Gaza City hospitals as Israel ramps up attacks on medical centers

Palestinians seeking refuge in Gaza hospitals fear the worst as Israel drops all pretenses of not targeting medical facilities, while Netanyahu makes the unbelievable claim that Israel doesn’t “seek to displace anyone.”
 
 

Casualties

  • 11,078 killed, including 4,506 children, and 27,490 wounded in Gaza
  • 183 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem

Key Developments

  • Israel ramps up its attacks on Gaza hospitals, where thousands are seeking refuge.
  • 260 people killed in Gaza in span of 24 hours.
  • Several Gaza City hospitals are surrounded by Israeli forces and fear the worst.
  • Water, food, and electricity shortages put more lives at risk as medical facilities on the verge of full shutdown.
  • Amidst the high-scale devastation, Netanyahu tells Fox News, “we don’t seek to displace anyone.”
  • Israel announces daily four-hour “tactical, localized” pauses in bombardments of Gaza, denounced by U.N. special rapporteur as “cynical and cruel.”
  • U.S. indicates concern for diplomatic impact of its support of Israel, as diplomatic cables warn the country is losing the Arab public “for a generation.”
  • Death toll rises in the West Bank.
  • France holds humanitarian fundraising conference for Gaza in Paris, Palestinian rights groups respond assert this “alone will not absolve France” to comply with its respinsibilties.

Israel targets Gaza hospitals

More


The Gaza Ministry of Health said that Israeli army tanks were surrounding the al-Rantisi and al-Nasr hospitals in Gaza City on Friday, as medical centers across the besieged Gaza Strip were subjected to an escalation of Israeli bombardment in the past 24 hours.

Thousands of patients, medical staff, and displaced people are trapped inside hospitals, without water and food, and are at risk of death at any moment. The world should be ashamed of itself for not doing anything in the face of massacres, and targeting and besieging hospitals,” Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra wrote.

Al-Jazeera meanwhile reported that Israeli forces had carried out strikes throughout the night very close to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, and that gunshots could be heard getting nearer and nearer on Friday morning. Israel has claimed al-Shifa hospital sits above Hamas’s main command center in Gaza — but the biggest hospital in Gaza is currently a refuge for thousands of civilians seeking shelter and medical treatment amid the absolute devastation caused by thousands of Israeli bombs raining over Gaza since October 7.

In the past 24 hours alone, Israeli strikes have reportedly hit Rantisi hospital, al-Nasr hospital, al-Shifa’ hospital, and the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, the al-Aqsa clinic in Khan Younis (in supposedly “safe” southern Gaza), in the vicinity of al-Awda hospital in Tal al-Zaatar, and al-Quds hospital in Gaza City. The strike on Rantisi sparked a fire on the lower floor of the children’s hospital. An as-of-yet unconfirmed number of people were killed by strikes at the Indonesian Hospital and al-Shifa.

The Ministry of Health also reported on Friday that Israeli forces had detained two ambulance drivers heading back north after bringing the wounded into southern Gaza, doing so “despite coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross.”

The heightened attacks against medical facilities come amid a severe increase in Israel’s restrictions on fuel, food, and water entering Gaza, threatening to grind the entire health care system to a halt — in addition to airstrikes targeting water tanks and solar panels. On Thursday night, the Gaza Ministry of Health said it only had “a few hours” until hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip and Gaza City were out of service — adding that 38 children suffering from kidney failure at Rantisi hospital were now deprived of life-saving dialysis services.

“Now 95% of the population are unable to access safe water and 1.5 million are displaced into crowded settings, and harsh winter weather looms. The conditions are ripe for the spread of communicable and waterborne diseases — diseases that adversely affect children and lead to preventable deaths,” International Rescue Committee’s Bob Kitchen said on Thursday.

NGO Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has meanwhile reported that children were suffering from severe malnutrition, dehydration, and waterborne illnesses — life-threatening conditions that, while they may not be included in death tolls from the violence, would directly result from Israel’s genocidal war tactics.

As of midday on Friday, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported that 11,078 people had been killed, including 4,506 children, and another 27,490 people wounded since October 7. Additionally, 2,700 people have been reported missing under the rubble, including 1,500 children.

Israel’s four-hour ‘humanitarian pauses’ described as ‘cynical and cruel’

Amid global calls for a humanitarian ceasefire, Israel has seemingly agreed to U.S. requests for humanitarian “pauses”, reportedly agreeing to “tactical, localized” daily pauses in bombardments for four to six hours daily.

UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese described these “pauses” as “very cynical and cruel”. “There have been continuous bombings, 6,000 bombs every week on the Gaza Strip, on this tiny piece of land where people are trapped and the destruction is massive. There won’t be any way back after what Israel is doing to the Gaza Strip,” Albanese told reporters in Australia.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has rejected Israel’s claims that humanitarian pauses in fighting would “only benefit Hamas”.

“These claims cannot justify the indescribable harm meted out to the roughly 2.2 million people living in the Strip who are now caught up in a daily struggle for survival, not just because of Israel’s incessant strikes but also because of the critical shortage of food and water,” the group said on Friday. “Bringing humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip is not a favor Israel is being asked to extend to the civilian population there. Rather, it is Israel’s duty under international humanitarian law.”

As the death toll in Gaza rises inexorably, including a significant proportion of children, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Fox News on Thursday, making incredible claims that Israel wasn’t “seek[ing] to displace anyone.”

“We want to see field hospitals. We’re encouraging and enabling humanitarian help to go there. That’s how we’re fighting this war.”

Netanyahu’s comments fly in the face of countless statements by Israeli, Palestinian, U.N., and other international organizations denouncing the collective punishment meted out against civilians in Gaza since October 7. According to OCHA, 1.5 million people — roughly 65% of Gaza’s population — have been internally displaced by the conflict. On Thursday, the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) warned of the devastating long-term consequences of the conflict.

“The unprecedented loss of life, human suffering, and destruction in the Gaza Strip is unacceptable. UNDP joins the UN Secretary-General’s calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire; the release of all hostages; and humanitarian access to allow life-saving aid to reach civilians at the scale needed,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said. “The impacts of this war will also have long-lasting effects and will not be confined to Gaza. On top of the humanitarian catastrophe we see unfolding, there is also a development crisis. The war is rapidly accelerating poverty in a population already vulnerable before this crisis hit.”

Fighting continues in Gaza and elsewhere

Hospitals weren’t the only targets of Israeli airstrikes since Thursday. According to WAFA news agency, Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli airstrikes in al-Shuja’iyya, Al-Zaytoun, Tel Al-Hawa, Sheikh Radwan, Al-Nasr, and al-Shati refugee camp. A number of deadly airstrikes were also reported in Nuseirat and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip – where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled despite the lie that the south would be safe from Israeli strikes.

Civil defense and ambulance teams recovered the bodies of more than 50 people killed by overnight Israeli airstrikes on al-Buraq school in the Gaza City neighborhood of al-Nasr.

Meanwhile, ground fighting continues to rage on between Palestinian resistance groups and Israeli armed forces in the Gaza Strip. At least 41 Israeli soldiers have been confirmed killed since the beginning of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Israeli media reported, while the army claimed to have killed 30 Hamas fighters in the past day, including the head of Hamas’ amphibious forces unit. Hamas has yet to confirm or deny these reports.

Two weeks into Israeli sending ground troops into Gaza, Haaretz reports that Israeli commanders estimate it would take “a time frame of months” to achieve their goal of defeating armed Palestinian resistance in the northern Gaza Strip, but that Washington, D.C. — Israel’s staunchest ally — was “signaling that there won’t be more than a few weeks, even after a limited deal for the release of captives.” 

“After that, the U.S. is pressing for the fighting to take place in a different format,” Haaretz wrote.

Despite its continued stance in favor of Israel’s right to so-called self-defense in public, United States officials are balking — privately and publicly — at the ruthless and, some say, unrealistic methods pursued by Israel.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown said on Thursday that Israel’s aim of toppling Hamas was “a pretty large order,” urging for Israel to limit the length of its war in Gaza. “The faster you can get to a point where you stop the hostilities, you have less strife for the civilian population that turns into someone who now wants to be the next member of Hamas,” he said.

Israel’s goal to eradicate Hamas was also dismissed by Palestinian Authority officials — which itself have been embroiled in conflict with the group ruling in the Gaza Strip over the years.

“Hamas is not only in Gaza, Hamas is an idea,” P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told France 24 on Thursday. “Hamas is in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Syria, Hamas leadership is in Qatar… so to say the goal is to eliminate Hamas is totally not going to happen.

Meanwhile, CNN revealed on Friday that U.S. President Joe Biden had received “stark warnings” from American diplomats in the Middle East and North Africa that its continued support for Israel was having a devastating impact on Washington’s standing in the region, “losing us Arab publics for a generation.”

Palestinian armed resistance groups have claimed rockets fired towards Israeli towns in the Gaza envelope as well as Tel Aviv in the past 24 hours, while groups in southern Lebanon were exchanging fire with forces in northern Israel. Armed groups in Iraq and Syria claimed strikes on U.S. bases in the country in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel.

More than 19 dead in the West Bank

Violence also continued unabated in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Armed confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian resistance groups reportedly took place in Jenin, Balata refugee camp, Qalqiliya, Beit Furik, Jabaa, and al-Askar refugee camp. The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health reported at least 18 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces overnight, including 14 in Jenin alone, and at least one teenager.

Another Palestinian teenager, 17-year-old Muhammad Ali Azzieh, was killed during an Israeli army raid in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem on Friday morning. WAFA news agency reported that Israeli forces prevented medical personnel from administering first aid as he lay in critical condition before detaining him, only for Azzieh to succumb to his wounds two hours later.

At least 50 Palestinians were detained overnight across the occupied West Bank, adding to the unprecedented number of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel since October 7. Israeli forces also destroyed the homes of two Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank city of Hebron early on Friday — part of a longstanding practice of punitive house demolitions that have been repeatedly denounced as collective punishment.

Settler attacks were also reported in the villages of Kisan, Ni’lin, and Masafer Yatta— as Peace Now has described settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the “third front” of the war.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli armed forces fired tear gas and bullets at worshippers seeking to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the fifth Friday in a row, Al-Quds newspaper reported.

France holds conference for Gaza aid

French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a conference on Thursday, bringing together 80 state and NGO representatives to discuss humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Israel reportedly declined to send an envoy to attend the hastily prepared conference — while P.A. Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh was in attendance.

“How many Palestinians must be killed for the war to stop? Are six children killed every hour enough? Are four women killed every hour enough? Are more than 10,000 martyrs in 30 days enough?” he said, rejecting calls for humanitarian pauses. “What is required is to stop the war immediately so that humanitarian relief becomes meaningful, or what is the meaning of a Palestinian getting dinner and being killed the next day?”

“We cannot accept absolute hostility to the point of dehumanization of the other side,” International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric told the Paris conference. “We are confronted with a catastrophic moral failing — one that the world must not tolerate.”

“Thousands of children killed cannot be collateral damage. Pushing a million people from their homes and concentrating them in areas without adequate infrastructure is forced displacement. Severely limiting food, water, and medicine is collective punishment,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told the assembled participants.

While Macron has claimed the conference generated promises for up to 1 billion euros in donations — which remain to be given — French newspaper Le Mondereported that NGOs were “disappointed” by the absence of a consensus regarding a full ceasefire.

Meanwhile, a group of Palestinian human rights organizations — including Addameer, Al-Haq, the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, and Miftah — addressed a statement to Macron calling on France to “clearly step up to its international responsibilities and take concrete actions to bring Israel’s aggression and genocidal acts to an end.”

“We note that given the absence of all the leading Palestinian civil society organizations and the invitation of Israeli representatives who do not fully recognize the UN-affirmed inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, this convening is hardly ‘representative’ of Palestinian civil society voices,” the organizations, which did not attend the conference, wrote. “Paying lip service to ‘peace’ by inviting ‘Palestinian civil society’ representatives to participate in mundane forums and raising humanitarian funds alone will not absolve France of the moral and political failure to comply with its responsibilities to uphold international law.”

“Humanitarianism has depoliticized the reality of a man-made system of control that aims at erasing and invisibilizing Gaza and the Palestinians, in a slow genocide,” they added. “Pledging funds and humanitarian supplies without a genuine political path to dismantle Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime, prevent genocidal acts against Palestinians, and the denial of their inalienable right to self-determination and return, will only perpetuate brutal cycles of violence.”


Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau

The Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau are the Mondoweiss staff members based in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.


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U.S. Officials Fear American Guns Ordered by Israel Could Fuel West Bank Violence

“We Need Eyes on Us for Protection”

Unhinged, Murderous Settlers Terrorize Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills

As Gaza faces genocide, extremist settlers in the West Bank are running rampant. One Youth of Sumud activist says: “The Israeli settler militias benefit from this state of war, they are the ones who are ruling this area.”

 
RYAH AQEL, In These Times,

Hamad Melhem al Hudarat is watching other Palestinians in the village of Khirbet Zanuta in the South Hebron Hills area of the West Bank gather their belongings on Oct. 30, 2023, and prepare to leave their homes because of relentless settler violence. PHOTO BY MARCUS YAM/LOS ANGELES TIMES

The Israeli military committed a massacre of Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on Oct. 31. The aerial assault struck a densely populated area that an Israeli military spokesman admitted was crowded with civilians—killing more than 100 people, injuring hundreds more, and leaving many trapped underneath the rubble. Young and old. Men, women, and children. 

The Israeli government has dropped thousands and thousands of bombs on Gaza over the last few weeks. The bombs don’t discriminate between a cancer patient or a futbol player — and they’ve murdered both orphans and women praying, until their end, that they would one day become mothers.

That bombardment on Tuesday, which was part of at least two days of assaults on the camp, was so heavy—The Washington Post reported that the destruction spanned 50,000 square feet — that it created craters (including one about 40 feet in diameter) and Palestinians ​tried to dig people out from smoldering piles of crumbled cement, rebar and wood” — that is, corpses which cannot be identified because of the intensity of the bombing. Al Jazeera reported that 19 family members of one of its engineers were killed in the attack. In questioning an Israeli military spokesperson, CNN’s Wolf Blitzerwas practically left speechless by the cruel rationale they offered.

No one is safe in Gaza, no one is safe in all of Palestine.

More

Resident of Masafer Yatta, and the author’s uncle, Ziad Makhamra, walks the road between Jinba and Bir Il-‘Id in 2019. PHOTO BY EMMA ALPERT

And this did not begin on Oct. 7, 2023. While the Israeli military is carrying out genocide in Gaza, it is also continuing to deploy its twin weapon of ethnic cleansing, a process that began in 1948 and has only accelerated since then.

Bearing witness to acts of genocide carries certain responsibilities, as does bearing witness to acts of ethnic cleansing. One requires that you not look away, despite the horrors. The other requires you to keep looking — and look deeper — for as long as it takes, because the careful work of ethnic cleansing isn’t always so obvious. It is carried out through laws, bureaucratic as well as physical obstacles meant to keep people from their homes, and sustained violence and dehumanization over a long period of time. Both are part of the Israeli settler colonial project in Palestine, facilitated in full force by the United States government, military and mainstream media.

Only 40 miles from Gaza, in the Masafer Yatta area of the West Bank, you can hear and see war planes flying to bombard our people. But with all eyes on Gaza, Israeli settlers in Masafer Yatta and other parts of the West Bank are taking advantage of this moment to intensify their violent attacks on Palestinian communities.

One requires that you not look away, despite the horrors. The other requires you to keep looking—and look deeper—for as long as it takes, because the careful work of ethnic cleansing isn’t always so obvious.

Last year was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005. So far, since Oct. 7, at least 144 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed, including dozens of children. Another 2,200have been injured and some 1,000forcibly displaced.

My maternal lineage traces back generations in Masafer Yatta, to the village of Jinba, which was once a hub for merchants and trade and served as a pit-stop for pilgrims crossing from Africa to the Arabian peninsula during the Ottoman Empire. Masafer Yatta lies in the South Hebron Hills, on the edge of the al-Naqab desert. The large rolling hills have been home to communities of shepherds and farmers for generations, which used to be full of life and interconnected with the nearby city of Yatta. Now the area largely lacks basic infrastructure and has been left isolated from neighboring areas as it is difficult to reach and full of violent threats from extremist settlers and soldiers. 

Over the last few decades, the settler project has only grown exponentially in numbers (in 2017 it was reported that more than 330,000 settlers had moved in to the West Bank in the previous 30 years) and the area has become increasingly violent and dangerous for Palestinians, fueled by settler organizations like Regavim, who operate under the guise of charitable organizations.

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Since the Nakba in 1948, the primary form of resistance for the Palestinians of Masafer Yatta has been asserting — and reasserting — their agency and their relationship to the land. When Israeli settlers demolish the homes of my family and our neighbors, with the full backing of the military, we persistently return, rebuild and remain a thorn in the ultra-Zionist settlers’ plan. My family’s history in the area is a proud one interconnected with other villages and families, a community that has only grown stronger over the past few decades as they continue to fight the settler colonial apparatus determined to disappear them.

The primary form of resistance for the Palestinians of Masafer Yatta has been asserting — and reasserting — their agency and their relationship to the land.

In the late 1970s, the State of Israel established a military firing zone that encompassed 12 of the villages of Masafer Yatta, including Jinba. Shortly after we saw settlements like Carmel developed in the South Hebron Hills. In the decades to follow, my community and our neighbors experienced frequent demolitions of our homes and entire villages, denial of building permits, harassment and violent attacks from nearby settlements, and, on the most basic level, a complete degradation of essential infrastructure. Residents of Masafer Yatta came together to create and maintain their own informal, community systems to provide water, education, roads, and healthcare in the absence of any governmental support.

Settler violence in the villages of Masafer Yatta is relentless and constant as settlements rapidly expand in the West Bank. For many years, school children in the South Hebron Hills have had cohorts of international solidarity activists in and out of their lives as chaperones because of the violence and harassment they face. Schools in Masafer Yatta have been destroyed and many Palestinian schools in the West Bank are now under demolition order. 

In 1999, the Israeli army forcibly evicted nearly 700 residents from their homes after issuing them demolition orders for ​living in the firing zone” — though their villages were there before the firing zone existed. Many later returned to their villages, either on their own or in the context of an interim legal injunction, which offered little protection for Palestinian communities. In the past decade, settler violence and the challenges of living in Masafer Yatta forced many to leave their homes. Since 2012, my uncle Ziad Makhamra has been the last remaining resident of his village, Bir Il-‘Id. Then, in 2022 the Israeli High Court ruled that there were no legal barriers to the planned expulsion of residents from these villages, effectively giving settlers and the military a green light to enact further ethnic cleansing.

Resident of Masafer Yatta, Ziad Makhamra with his nephew Mahmoud, in Jinba in 2019. PHOTO BY EMMA ALPERT

One family, the Hathaleen’s of Umm al-Khair in Hebron, have long been at the front of the fight for Masafer Yatta, and community leader Sheikh Suleiman Hathaleen was a profound source of inspiration. I met him in 2016and, immediately upon meeting, he was planning with me about how to resist efforts to drive Palestinians out of their villages in the West Bank, offering that delegates from Masafer Yatta could help protect our home by speaking out to the world. Liberation was always on his mind. His nephew, Alaa, tells me that he would always pray for Palestinian prisoners and for their freedom, and would always say that change is achieved ​with dignity or glory.” He was killed (run over by an Israeli tow truck during a raid) in the winter of 2022while protesting the army confiscating vehicles in Masafer Yatta. Sheikh Suleiman is someone who inspired us for decades and gave us a model of true integrity that was sorely lacking in so-called Palestinian leadership.

“The Israeli settler militias benefit from this state of war, they are the ones who are ruling this area. Israeli settler militias in Israeli military uniforms have blocked and closed all the entrances of the villages in Masafer Yatta, which means all the entrances in Masafer Yatta are under siege,” says Hureini, an activist with Youth of Sumud.

Today, the Hathaleen family homes — like my family’s homes — are under threat. On Oct. 12, the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, was seen handing out assault rifles to settlers who are part of a violent history of attacking Palestinians in the West Bank. The day after these guns were handed out, Zakariya Adra, a young man in at-Tuwani who was leaving Friday prayers, was shot by a settler. According to residents I spoke with, the community responded by collecting blood at the local hospital in Yatta and Zakariya is now recovering, with a spleen removed.

According to Mohammad Hureini, Zakariya’s cousin who is also a resident of at-Tuwani in Masafer Yatta, the settler shot him with a dumdum bullet, which expands dramatically on impact, and that has been internationally prohibited since the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. 

A man stands next to the belongings he has packed up to move away from his village in the South Hebron Hills because of how much settler violence and harassment he and the community there has been facing. PHOTO BY MARCUS YAM/LOS ANGELES TIMES

The Israeli settler militias benefit from this state of war, they are the ones who are ruling this area. Israeli settler militias in Israeli military uniforms have blocked and closed all the entrances of the villages in Masafer Yatta, which means all the entrances in Masafer Yatta are under siege,” says Hureini, who is also a local activist with Youth of Sumud, a long-running community group in the area (that has Jewish partners) which has consistently supported residents of Masafer Yatta by helping protect their villages through, among other things, agricultural and advocacy programs.

These militias have destroyed agricultural lands, [they are] destroying crops, demolishing homes and burning their homes, attacking people in their homes, and shooting people with intent to kill,” Hureini says.

Relatedly, one of the most shocking settler and soldier attacks in the West Bank since Oct. 7, outside of the South Hebron Hills, was in the village of Wadi as-Seeq near Ramallah. And near Nablus, Bilal Saleh was shot and killedby a settler while collecting olives. 

A view of the village Bir al-Ghawanmeh in Masafer Yatta, taken from the village of Jinba. PHOTO BY MAHMOUD MAKHAMRA

In the South Hebron Hills, Alaa Hathaleen has been making regular demands for the international community to not abandon Masafer Yatta, where the Palestinian population has fallen drastically and extremist settlers are regularly violent. At least 84 people have left in just the past few months alone in part because their vehicles were confiscated, making it impossible to travel to and from their homes in the already difficult-to-reach villages. Settler militia violence, fully under the watch and guard of the Israeli army, has only intensified and smaller communities have been subject to daily harassment and relentless destruction until residents have no choice but to leave. In the greater South Hebron Hills area, at least two villages have been depopulated as well as 13 other communities in the West Bank. When Alaa demands support, he demands all eyes on Masafer Yatta, because we as a people can sometimes count on our hands how many eyes are watching for us.

Alaa said that near the end of October, he and his family were attacked by one of the violent gangs of settlers, dressed in reserve soldiers’ uniforms and roaming around Masafer Yatta and other parts of the West Bank. Settlers lined up members of the Hathaleen family and made them sit facing the walls and took their phones. Alaa said they beat them and threatened them at gunpoint, forcing one member of the family to record a video praising Israel. Alaa made sure to tell his Instagram followers that anyone who views the forced video should understand that it is full of lies and done under duress. When the settlers finally left, Alaa said they told them that if they didn’t have an Israeli flag flying above the village in 24 hours, they would come back and massacre everyone.

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Another night, settlers burned a home in the village of a-Safai at-Tahta and attacked Tuba where, according to an activist, they ransacked a home, ​cut off the small village’s lights, punctured the water tank and threw the food for their animals on the floor.” The Israeli army then, according to a resident, barred Palestinians in those villages from even entering their destroyed homes. 

Awdah Hathleen, writer, English teacher and resident of Umm al-Khair, shared with some comrades that, ​The settlers were attacking many villages in Masafer Yatta last night. They burnt houses in a-Safai and they cut electricity in Tuba. … Let’s all pray that all this violence against Masafer Yatta will end.”

The scenes were a reminder of the pogrom against Huwara in the Nablus area in February and a similar pogrom against Turmus Ayya in June, when hundreds of Israeli settlers stormed the town and burned houses and cars and terrorized residents. These types of attacks, at various scales, occur with horrifying regularity for Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta and other parts of the West Bank. Villages are being dismantled, histories are being erased, generations of memories lost.

A few days before the assault on a-Safai at-Tahta, in nearby Susiya, settlers stormed the village, pulling men from their homes. Fatma, a resident of Susiya, confirmed the harrowing experience and wrote in a text that ​they cursed our father yesterday at night, searched them, took his phones, threatened us, and filmed a video at gunpoint, denouncing Hamas and the terrorism it committed on the 7th of the month.”

The settler, Fatma said, told them, ​Tomorrow I will come back to you and I want to see the Israeli flag flying over the houses in Khirbet Umm al-Khair. … If you fail, we will punish you with a severe punishment — all at gunpoint.”

The author’s (Ryah Aqel) aunt’s home in Jinba, in the West Bank. One of the remaining houses in Jinba after occupation forces demolished most of these homes in the past century. PHOTO BY MAHMOUD MAKHAMRA
“Tomorrow I will come back to you and I want to see the Israeli flag flying over the houses in Khirbet Umm al-Khair. … If you fail, we will punish you with a severe punishment—all at gunpoint.”

About a week ago in Jinba, a settler militia attacked the village mosque and destroyed its speaker, apparently in order to prevent the call to prayer. According to my cousin and local journalist, Mahmoud Jamal, people stayed inside of their homes during this attack because it is understood that these kinds of acts are designed to bring people out of their homes and into danger. After the settlers destroyed the mosque speaker, Jamal says they then traveled to neighboring villages to harass shepherds and their flocks. 

These violent methods by settlers, the military, and the Israeli and U.S. governments, are all echoes of each other. They’re connected to the same trick that Biden was apparently using to try and convince Jordan and Egypt to enact the mass forcible transfer of our people in Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula or somewhere else. The people of Gaza have been clear — as have the people of Masafer Yatta — that this is our home. If it was up to us, we would remain in our homes. Unfortunately, there are world powers that want to keep us from those homes.

Palestinians everywhere, like me and Alaa from Masafer Yatta, our people in Gaza, in Jerusalem, Palestinians inside Israel, and in the diaspora, need the world to stop looking away from what is happening. We need eyes on us for protection — and we need eyes on us for accountability. 

Above all, we need those eyes to turn to action, and that action needs to end genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.


RYAH AQEL is a filmmaker and creator based in Michigan and New York. Since 2015, she has been documenting her family’s decades-long battle to remain on their land in the South Hebron Hills.

Have thoughts or reactions to this or any other piece that you’d like to share? Send us a note with the Letter to the Editor form.
 

November 15-30, 2023
Palestinian Voices Film Program

Transform the World through Arab Films

At the Arab Film and Media Institute (AFMI) we seek to continually change the narrative, share our stories, and foster understanding of our common humanity through art and storytelling.  In this dire time, we want to share a selection of films that showcase the history, culture and people of Palestine.

Our hope is that this free program, entitled PALESTINIAN VOICES, can be a resource to provide insight into the current situation unfolding in Gaza and the people being affected.

PALESTINIAN VOICES will run through the entire month of November.  You can watch most of the films in this series online and from anywhere in the world.  A few titles are limited to viewers in the United States and some films will also screen in person in select cities.
 

November 12, 2023
Peace in Ukraine and the link to Palestine

World Beyond War Presents a program on peace in Ukraine,
including the link to Palestine
The Crossing, 1127 University Avenue, Madison
6-9 pm

Panelists:
Andrew Kydd – UW-Madison Professor of Political Science: “I am in favor of US support for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.”
David Swanson – World BEYOND War International Director: “When you’re deep in a hole the first thing to do is stop killing people.”
Samer Alatout – UW-Madison Professor of Community & Environmental Sociology: “The war on Ukraine cannot be understood in isolation, it is one node in wars over the details of a new world order. The same thing can be said about the war on Palestine. They are inseparable, they fit the same narrative.”

After the panel, there will be food, drinks, and a pro-peace art showcase of stirring music and poetry. Taiko drummers, Mennonite a capella singers, poets, and piano, fiddle, and horn players will perform on the theme “Peace Through Empathy.”

More information
 

November 8, 2023
Free Palestine is a Climate Justice Issue

Dear CJA Members and Allies,

Over the past month we have seen the onslaught and escalation against Palestinians in their struggle for land sovereignty, self-determination, decolonization and life. As environmental justice communities hailing from sacrifice zones across the United States, we are answering the call to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people on the frontlines of genocidal warfare.  We stand firmly on the side of resistance against occupation, apartheid and war. As the climate justice movement we stand firmly in our principles for a Just Transition. 

One of these principles for a Just Transition is Solidarity:

A Just Transition must be liberatory and transformative. The impacts of the extractive economy knows no borders. We recognize the interconnectedness of our communities as well as our issues. Therefore, our solutions call for local, regional, national and global solidarity that confronts imperialism and militarism. CJA Just Transition Principles

We invite you to join us Wednesday, November 8, 6pm EST, alongside movement partners, for our Free Palestine is a Climate Justice Issue teach-in. Hear from Palestinian activists and US environmental leaders on how our struggles are interconnected and how we must advocate for a Free Palestine. Climate justice calls upon us to wage love for people and the planet. Now is the time to rise up and join the fight to free Palestine. As a movement we are extending the call to all climate and environmental groups seeking to stand for justice. In the name of life, freedom, and Mother Earth.

Register here
 

November 8, 2023
Emergency West Bank Online Fundraiser

Join us this Wednesday for our next webinar of Solidarity Speaks, an emergency series giving people around the world a forum to hear directly from Palestinians and Israelis calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to collective punishment in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Life in the last weeks has become nearly impossible for Palestinian communities in Area C. They are experiencing dramatic escalations of settler violence, severe military lockdowns, and frightening threats to forcibly expel them from their homes.

Settlers have taken up arms, given to them by Israeli state officials, and are dressed in army uniforms, making it almost impossible to distinguish between settlers and soldiers. All aspects of life have effectively been shut down for these communities. Under this unlivable reality, many Palestinian families have already been forced to flee. Join us for an emergency fundraiser to materially support communities facing one of the largest mass expulsions of Palestinians since 1948.

We will be joined on Wednesday by Ali Awad and Awdah Hathaleen, two long standing advocates against the expropriation of Palestinian land in Masafer Yatta and for the collective rights of their communities in Area C.

Register here for the emergency fundraiser.

Wednesday, November 8th:
8PM Jerusalem, 7PM Berlin, 6PM London, 1PM NYC, 12PM Madison

Please help us spread the word and share this emergency webinar series with relevant activist, faith, and learning communities. We know many people are looking for perspective in this moment of urgency and want as many people as possible to hear directly from Palestinians and Israelis calling for justice.

This is an emergency fundraiser for Palestinian communities in Area C defending their lands from military incursions, settler militias, and displacement. 

Registration