Amid the Mourning, Israel’s Settlement Enterprise Celebrates a Great Victory
Damage after settlers attacked the village of Wadi al-Siq in the West Bank a week ago. Such incidents are part of a planned, calculated and well-financed program.
Under cover of the collective shock and horror at Hamas’ pogrom on October 7, under cover of bereavement, mourning, pain and the anxiety over the hostages’ fate, settler militias are accelerating and expanding their attacks on Palestinian shepherd communities in large parts of the West Bank. They’re also chasing Palestinian farmers from the lands, orchards and olive groves – often with backing from the army.
A gradual three-decade process has received its window of opportunity to near its logical conclusion: expulsion in broad daylight in preparation for the full “cleansing” of around 60 percent of the West Bank of its indigenous people.
It’s happening at every house, tent and road that the Israeli Civil Administration’s discriminatory bureaucracy failed to destroy, and wherever military orders have failed to prevent people from remaining in their villages that existed before 1948, or from cultivating their land. Settlers are now coming armed and committing acts of violence to fulfill the official goal: expanding living space for Jews at the expense of the Palestinians.
On Saturday morning, a settler who is an off-duty soldier shot dead a Palestinian, 40-year-old Bilal Saleh, as he harvested olives with his children on his land in the village of Al-Sawiya south of Nablus. About two hours earlier, settlers forced harvesters out of an olive grove between the villages of Jalud and Qusra east of Al-Sawiya. The settlers beat up and injured one of the Palestinians.
On Saturday afternoon, as I began to write this piece, residents of the ancient village of Zanuta in the South Hebron Hills packed their belongings and left their cave dwellings and homes. In recent weeks, more intensely than ever, the residents have been harassed and threatened by settlers from nearby outposts. They had already been denied access to their grazing land – which depleted their flocks and jeopardized their livelihood. Now the settlers’ threats have become too direct for them to stay.
The soldiers are accompanying the settlers on their raids – or even finishing the job for them.
The following are the other real-time reports that I received on Saturday.