West Bank families barricaded inside their homes to survive Israeli settler attacks
Security fencing in a home in the Masoudiyya area, northern West Bank, July 2026
Shatha Hammad reports in Mondoweiss on 9 July 2026:
Bassam Ideis opens the large gate leading to his home’s courtyard in the Masoudiyya area of the northern West Bank to welcome his guests, staying by the entrance to shut it quickly behind him. Before walking away, he turns back after a few steps to check that it’s locked. Settler incursions from the new outpost erected on May 15 have increased of late. He checks the lock again, just to be sure.
On either side of the gate, a long fence encircles the Ideis family home. Iron shutters have been placed over every window. Children rarely come out to play in the courtyard, and the entire property looks abandoned from the outside.
The neighborhood we are visiting is located on land belonging to the village of Burqa, three kilometers away northwest of Nablus. The Ideis family is one of 12 families that have turned their homes into small, semi-fortified compounds in the neighborhood, barricading themselves in their homes as a result of daily attacks from Israeli settlers. Residents of the neighborhood say these attacks have escalated since August 2023 and are aimed at displacing and expelling them from the area.
Masoudiyya sits at the choke point of settlement expansion on the main road connecting Nablus, Tulkarem, and Jenin. The outpost tent erected by settlers outside Masoudiyya is on the front lines of Israel’s effort to create a large settler presence in the heart of the northern West Bank. Israel has proposed a settler road connecting the formerly evacuated Israeli settlements around Nablus and Jenin with the rest of the West Bank’s settlement network — part of a broader “connectivity plan” put forward by the region’s Settler Council to serve 18 new prospective settlements. The road would run along the eastern edge of Masoudiyya.
Residents say the road is expected to confiscate 4,000 dunams (400 hectares) of land from Deir Sharaf, Burqa, Sebastia, Silat al-Dhaher, Bazariyya, al-Attara, and al-Funduqumiyya.
No choice but to remain
On May 20, 2026, the families of Masoudiyya survived a settler attack on their homes, which included live fire and attempted break-ins at several houses. It was the fourth time in less than a month that settlers had burned the wheat and barley crops in the Masoudiyya plain, and the message the settlers were sending was clear: the violence was not going to stop.