“If I see you, I will kill you”: Covering settler violence in the West Bank
The eviction of a Bedouin settlement at Wadi al-Siq
Phineas Rueckert & Youssr Youssef report in Forbidden Stories – The Gaza Project on 25 June 2014:
Key Findings
- West Bank journalists describe zones that have become increasingly difficult to access due to Israeli military and settler attacks, checkpoints, and threats
- Since a Bedouin community at Wadi al-Siq was forcibly displaced in October, new settler infrastructure has been built
- Israeli settlers have publicized illegal expansion online, listed properties on Airbnb, and claimed Virginia County Sheriff’s Departments sent them equipment.
On October 11, 2023, Omri Eran-Vardi arrived at Wadi al-Siq, a desert hillside community in the West Bank, east of Ramallah, nestled among sheep pastures and rolling hills. Eran-Vardi, an Israeli photojournalist and activist, had learned that Israeli settlers had threatened the roughly 200-person Bedouin community with eviction.
That day, Eran-Vardi – who agreed to publicly share his account for the first time with +972 Magazine, a partner on this project – began to document the eviction and speak with residents.
The next morning, after spending the night in a nearby Palestinian community, he returned to Wadi al-Siq to continue reporting. Sometime after noon, Israeli settlers and masked soldiers from the Desert Frontier unit, an Israeli military unit known for its violent treatment of Palestinians and comprising mostly conscripted “hilltop” settlers, arrived at Wadi al-Siq. The eviction took on a new tenor: soldiers began using violence against the community, in some cases torturing and imprisoning activists and residents.
That afternoon, Israeli soldiers, accompanied by settlers, apprehended a Palestinian family attempting to flee. “They removed the family from the vehicle, laid all the men, about five, including two boys, face down on the gravel,” Eran-Vardi recounted. Eran-Vardi approached them to inquire. One of them responded by punching him in the nose, he said. A settler claimed the villagers supported Hamas. A soldier handcuffed Eran-Vardi and took his camera.
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Forbidden Stories and its partners set out to pursue the work of journalists in the West Bank censored from covering the expansion of settlements and violence against Palestinian communities. We used satellite imagery and open-source research to map the expansion of settler infrastructure amidst an uptick in violence against Palestinians that the United Nations has denounced. Our analysis indicates a growth of infrastructure, including in Wadi al-Siq and other areas where settlers and soldiers have allegedly threatened journalists. Our findings also show how settler communities publicized their expansion online, including in Airbnb listings, YouTube videos, and social media posts.