In a single week, a new settler outpost erases an entire Palestinian community
An Israeli settlers confronts activists in the Palestinian village of Maghayer Al-Dir, 21 May 2025
Oren Ziv reports in +972 on 26 May 26 2025:
On the morning of May 18, Israeli settlers established an illegal outpost inside the Palestinian shepherding community of Maghayer Al-Dir in Area C of the West Bank, just 100 meters from residents’ homes.
By midweek, before any violent confrontations or incidents of livestock theft, about half the Palestinian villagers had packed up their belongings and fled, with the rest preparing to do the same: families began loading sheep, furniture, animal feed and water tanks onto trucks under the setters’ watchful eyes.
But on Saturday afternoon, the settlers’ routine “walking tour” through the village escalated into an organized attack. Four settlers began shoving young Palestinians standing on the roofs of structures being dismantled. “[The settlers] were looking for a fight,” said Avishay Mohar, an activist and photographer who was on the scene.
The settlers and Palestinians began throwing stones at each other. Just when the confrontation seemed to have ended, the settlers called reinforcements: about 25 additional settlers — some masked, many armed with assault rifles and clubs — joined the attack on residents and international activists, who began fighting back.
One settler was struck in the head by a large stone, collapsed and lost consciousness. A Palestinian was also struck in the face by a rock. A second settler, reportedly a minor, seized the pistol from the vest of his passed-out friend and began firing into the air. “Another settler showed up with an M16 and started shooting at us,” Mohar recalled. As panic spread, residents ran frantically toward the neighboring village of Wadi Al-Siq, whose own population had been displaced months earlier during a surge in state-backed settler violence in October 2023.