Cassandra Dixon, November 6, 2024

I am extremely grateful to the back here in Masafer Yatta in the southern end of the West Bank.

I can’t begin to tell you how terrible the situation is here.  

It is completely unbelievable what has been lost in the last year – HUGE areas of land, road access, school access, buildings, sheep, goats, employment, and ALL sense of security and safety.  Settlers, always  heavily armed and often dressed as soldiers in their own self-managed state funded units, are routinely entering villages, yards and houses, and it is now impossible to walk safely between villages. School children are unable to reach their schools and no one can move freely.  Most outside work has ended and settlers are preventing shepherds from grazing their flocks or working on their land. Families are struggling to support themselves while coping with a level of violence and threats from settlers that we cannot imagine.  Everyone I know seems to have aged 20 years 💔

The settlers are using large flocks of their own to take Palestinian grazing land, and establishing countless “agricultural outposts”.  By establishing a presence and demonstrating a willingness to use violence they are preventing Palestinian farmers from  grazing their own flocks on their own land – even on lands that they had planted for grazing, and from working in their olive groves.  The settlers with the sheep are heavily armed and have shown their own willingness to use  extreme violence.  When Palestinian shepherds try to access their land these settlers attack them and steal the sheep, adding to their own herds.  Because Palestinian shepherds can’t graze their sheep they have been forced to sell sheep to buy feed for the rest.

I really can not begin to find the words to express the horror of what is happening – and although it has been going on since the 80’s here, the escalation in numbers, violence and ferocity of the settlers is shocking.  As before 7 October they still have no recourse to a legal system  despite the now daily thefts and violence they are enduring, and now in addition the settlers have more or less merged with the Israeli armed forces and are moving like heavily armed and well funded paramilitary units acting with complete and total impunity.In the space of a year the loss of land and freedom here – just in this one place – is staggering.

Families here  in Masafer Yatta have called for international solidarity to replace sheep stolen and injured by settlers in  attacks on shepherds and their flocks.  These animals are absolutely essential to the livelihoods of families on this front line as they struggle to remain in their lands in the face of escalating and life threatening settler violence.  

If you are able to share with anyone, here is a link to donate: https://tinyurl.com/Replacethesheep

Thank you,
Cassandra 

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