Life in a laboratory of Israeli ethnic cleansing
An Israeli military jeep drives through the West Bank village of Al-Mughayyir after an Israeli settler attack in the area, 11 August 2026
Haroon Bshara writes in +972 on 14 August 2026:
There are dates that divide your life into a before and after. For me, it is April 12, 2024. That afternoon, hundreds of armed settlers stormed our village of Al-Mughayyir under the protection of the Israeli army, setting homes and cars ablaze. At least 25 residents were injured, some by settler and soldier fire — and 25-year-old Jihad Abu Alia was shot in the head and killed, martyred only weeks before his wedding.
On that day, the settlers reached my home. They barged inside, vandalized everything they could, and tried to burn the house while we were still in it. My wife and I covered our children with our own bodies as smoke filled the rooms. Afterward, our children needed months of psychological treatment to recover from the PTSD.
But my wife, who was pregnant at the time, paid the heaviest toll. The shock of that day affected her pregnancy so severely that doctors were forced to deliver our son prematurely. Yaqoub, the wish of my heart, lived for only two days. He is one of the youngest victims of settler terror, a child who died before he had a chance to see the light of day.
For most people, Al-Mughayyir is just another Palestinian village on a map. For us, it has long been on the front line against the relentless Israeli machine of annexation and dispossession in the occupied West Bank.
Home to fewer than 4,000 residents, the village sits 30 kilometers northeast of Ramallah, with agricultural lands stretching east toward the Jordan Valley. Between us and those lands runs the Allon Road, a north-south highway built by Israel through the West Bank that links settlements across the Jordan Valley while largely bypassing Palestinian communities.