[In mere months, entire Palestinian communities between Ramallah
and Jericho have been chased out by settler violence and state
policies — paving the way for a total Israeli takeover of thousands
of acres of land.]
[[link removed]]

‘IT’S LIKE 1948’: ISRAEL CLEANSES VAST WEST BANK REGION OF
NEARLY ALL PALESTINIANS  
[[link removed]]


 

Oren Ziv
August 31, 2023
972 Magazine
[[link removed]]

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[[link removed]]

_ In mere months, entire Palestinian communities between Ramallah and
Jericho have been chased out by settler violence and state policies
— paving the way for a total Israeli takeover of thousands of acres
of land. _

The belongings and remains of homes of Palestinian families in Ein
Samia, West Bank, Oren Ziv

 

There are almost no Palestinians remaining in a vast area stretching
east from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho. Most of the
communities who lived in the area — which covers around 150,000
dunams, or 150 square kilometers, of the occupied West Bank — have
fled for their lives in recent months as a result of intensifying
Israeli settler violence and land seizures, backed by the Israeli army
and state institutions. The near-total emptying of the region’s
Palestinian population shows how Israel’s slow but gradual process
of ethnic cleansing is continuing apace, effectively annexing large
swathes of the occupied territory for exclusive Jewish settlement.

More than 10 settler outposts — which are illegal even under Israeli
law, though the current far-right government is working hard to
legalize them — have been established in this area over the past few
years, with their settlers weaponizing shepherding as a means to take
over Palestinians’ land and force them out. The few small
Palestinian communities that remain in the area may also soon be
forced to leave, out of grave fear for their physical safety and
mental wellbeing. In the last year alone, hundreds of Palestinians
have been forcibly displaced in this way.

To date, four Palestinian communities have been expelled from this
region. In 2019, two groups of Palestinian families evacuated from the
southern part of the area, near the Taybeh junction. In May of this
year, the 200 residents of Ein Samia dismantled their own homes
[[link removed]] and fled
following relentless settler violence. In July 2022, the 100-strong
community of Ras a-Tin followed suit. In early August, the 88
residents of al-Qabun were forced to abandon their homes.

There are currently only three Palestinian communities left in the
area: Ein al-Rashash, Jabit, and Ras Ein al-Auja. All of them are
exposed to the same settler harassment that forced their former
neighbors to flee.

This phenomenon is beginning to spill over to other Palestinian
communities in adjacent areas. According to data collected by the UN
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, 35 residents of the nearby
village of Wadi a-Seeq recently packed up and fled, while the families
that remain are facing heightened danger. In al-Baqa’a, 43 residents
— the majority of the community — fled in July following the
establishment of a new settler outpost and an arson attack on a house
in the village.

According to Kerem Navot, an NGO that monitors developments on the
ground in the West Bank, Israeli settlers have now effectively taken
over an area between the Allon Road in the west, Route 90 in the east,
Al-Ma’arjat Road near Taybeh in the south, and Route 505 near Duma
in the north. This region includes Firing Zone 906 — designated
across 88,000 dunams by the army in 1967 — around which most of the
outposts have been established, and which was mainly used as a grazing
area by Palestinian Bedouins. The remaining 60,000 dunams, between the
firing zone and the Allon Road, is where these communities lived until
they were forcibly displaced.

Aerial view of the area around al-Qabun school after the Palestinian
community fled under the threat of Israeli settler violence, West
Bank. (Oren Ziv)

All of this land is located in Area C, which is designated for Israeli
civil and military control under the Oslo Accords. Some of it is
privately owned by Palestinians, and other parts are deemed “state
land” by the Israeli occupation authorities. Today, Palestinians
only have access to about 1,000 dunams of this territory, and even
those are prone to settler harassment and attacks.

ESCALATING SETTLER VIOLENCE

Technically, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from this area was
not an official act of “transfer.” Neither the Israeli army nor
the Civil Administration — the occupation’s bureaucratic arm —
arrived with trucks, loaded the residents onboard, and destroyed their
houses.

But they didn’t have to: in the face of unremitting settler violence
and crippling restrictions by the Israeli authorities, the Palestinian
residents felt that they had no choice but to flee. Some packed up
their modest belongings, others left them behind. Largely agricultural
communities, they relocated to areas where it would be more difficult
for them to make a living, without pastoral land, but where they would
at least enjoy temporary peace of mind.

Palestinians from several of the displaced communities described the
same pattern to +972: Israeli settlers arrive with their herds and
prevent them from grazing on land where Palestinians have grazed for
decades; then armed settlers would proceed to harass them day and
night, even entering houses, without the army or police intervening.
Everyone described the same, overwhelming feelings of fear and
distress under the shadow of these settler invasions.

“It’s like 1948,” said Mohammed Hussein, a resident of Ein Samia
— invoking the year of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) and the
expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland
during Israel’s establishment.

According to the Palestinian residents, the situation grew worse
following the establishment and growth of several grazing settler
outposts in the area in recent years; settler violence and further
expansion also noticeably escalated since the current Israeli
government, led by extremist far-right parties, was sworn in last
December. According to UN OCHA, there were 14 settler attacks recorded
in the area in 2019, 13 in 2020, and 14 in 2021. That number jumped to
40 attacks in 2022, and 29 settler attacks so far since the beginning
of 2023. These numbers are likely an undercount, as not every case of
violence has been documented.

Map of the West Bank region in which most Palestinian communities have
been forced out by Israeli settler violence and state policies.
(Courtesy of Kerem Navot)

There is a clear correlation between the number of settler attacks and
the gradual expulsion of Palestinians. In Ein Samia, for example,
there were four reported attacks against the community in 2019. By May
2023, that number had gone up to 10 attacks since the start of the
year alone. The same happened in Ras a-Tin (the UN defines Ras a-Tin
and al-Qabun as one community); whereas there was only one attack in
2021, there were four separate attacks in 2022, compelling some
residents to leave. Since 2023, there have been three reported
attacks, pushing the rest of the community to leave entirely.

Moreover, according to UN OCHA, between 2019 and August 2023, one
Palestinian was killed and another 132 were wounded by violence in the
area; some were injured as a result of army or police activity during
or after settler attacks. During the same period, soldiers or police
officers killed two Palestinians and injured 230 during protests
against surrounding settlements.

Many of the Palestinian families in the area are refugees from the
Naqab/Negev desert inside what is today Israel, who in 1948 were
expelled to the West Bank, and since 1967 have been expelled at least
once more. Some arrived in this region in the late 1960s, after being
forced out by the army from other places, while others arrived in the
‘80s or ‘90s. Most of the land they lived on is privately owned by
Palestinians from nearby villages, who lease them the property. 

The Israeli authorities, along with the settlers, have played a
central role in the displacement. For years, the occupation apparatus
has banned the Palestinian communities from construction; demolished
their homes; denied them connection to water and electricity; stopped
them from paving roads; issued demolition orders for schools built
with funds from the European Union; established and recognized Jewish
settlements; and, of course, stood by during settler violence. 

‘THE GOVERNMENT IS WITH THEM’

The latest Palestinian community to be expelled from the area was
al-Qabun, established in 1996. It was made up of 12 families — 86
residents, 26 of them minors. Some of them moved west of the Allon
Road, which bisects the West Bank from north to south, to land
belonging to the village of Khirbet Abu Falah, while others left for
other parts of the West Bank.

Drawings and remains at the school in al-Qabun, days after the
Palestinian community fled in the face of Israeli settler violence,
West Bank. (Oren Ziv)

In February, settlers established a new herding outpost near al-Qabun.
Since then, settlers arrived on horses and tractors to provoke and
frighten the Palestinian families, walking between their houses, while
taking over their agricultural land and preventing them from grazing.

On a tour of the village’s location about 10 days after the
expulsion, there were medicine bottles, dishes, and a water tank
scattered across the ground — eerie remnants of an abandoned
community. The school, built with European aid and subject to an
Israeli demolition order, was also deserted, its windows smashed and
contents looted. Several posters made by the children still hung on
the walls.

“We have always been under occupation, in a prison with checkpoints,
but now we live in a prison van,” said Ali Abu al-Kabash, 60,
sitting in a tent he had set up in an open area across the Allon Road.
Abu al-Kabash, who is originally from a-Samu, near Hebron, moved to
the Ramallah area in the 1980s, and to the area near Ras a-Tin in
1995.

“Before the [last] election, the settlers would run away if there
were a few of us [facing them]. Today, they attack because the
government is with them. The police, the army, and the Shin Bet are
all with them,” he added.

“For 25 years we lived a normal life,” Abu al-Kabash continued.
“In recent years, the settlers came and established two outposts
[Micah’s Farm and Malachei HaShalom]. They blocked the road between
us and Ein al-Rashash, and the one that goes down toward Fasayil. We
would herd in the area, but they came to us in the name of the
government and the Civil Administration and said that the land belongs
to the settlers. They brought sheep to eat the food we grew
for _our_ sheep … They enter houses, sometimes with many soldiers,
taking photos, even when there are girls, women, and old men
present.”

According to Abu al-Kabash, the violence increased after the Muslim
holiday of Eid al-Fitr in May. “They park at the entrance of the
homes. Some of them are under 12 years old, under the age of criminal
responsibility. They go in, look in the refrigerator, or at our
phones. What can we do? They want Area C for Israel, to take control
of the land through the settlers, but without war. But where will we
go? The occupation is everywhere.”

Ali Abu al-Kabash from the village of Al-Qabun, after the Palestinian
community fled under the threat of Israeli settler violence, July
2023. (Oren Ziv)

Ras a-Tin, which neighbors al-Qabun, was subjected to similar
harassment and severe violence by settlers. On the day its residents
fled, in July 2022, Ahmad Kaabna, the _mukhtar_ of Ras a-Tin — who
died suddenly in early August at age 60 — told a group of activists:
“The settlers frightened the women, the children — everyone. They
came to the homes at night in groups of 10-15 people … the army with
them. If you talk to them and say ‘get away, get out of here,’
they call the army or the police, who come and arrest the young
[Palestinians].”

On July 14, 2021 — almost exactly a year before many families left,
and two years before it was displaced entirely — the army, along
with representatives of the Civil Administration, took over 49
structures belonging to the community, leaving 13 of the families
homeless. The residents told
[[link removed]] UN
OCHA that Israeli officials specifically ordered them to move to Area
B of the West Bank.

‘IT WILL NOT END HERE’

The residents of Ein Samia were driven from their homes in May, after
five consecutive days of attacks. Like al-Qabun’s residents, some of
them moved to land belonging to Palestinians living in Khirbet Abu
Falah, while others moved to nearby towns and cities such as Deir
Jarir, Taybeh, and Jericho.

“We have been living here for 44 years with the permission of the
landowners,” said Hussein back in May as he packed his belongings in
Ein Samia. “For years we have been here alone against the settlers,
we have had no protection. In the last few days, settlers came and
threw stones at the buildings. The children were very afraid. The goal
was for us to leave. From 1948 until today we have lived in a
continuous Nakba. Today it’s Ein Samia, but it will not end here.”

Two and a half months after the expulsion, Hussein and his family are
still trying to rebuild their lives. They are now living in Area B,
where the Palestinian Authority is responsible for planning, and where
it is rare for Israel to carry out demolitions.

“I was born in Hebron but grew up in this area,” Hussein said.
“We lived in Auja [in the Jordan Valley] until 1967, then the army
came with tanks and gave us 24 hours to evacuate. We moved as a large
group to Taybeh, near Ramallah, until they expelled us again and
brought us here in the ‘70s.”

Mohammed Hussein, a resident of Ein Samia, after his family fled their
village under the threat of Israeli settler violence, West Bank, July
2023. (Oren Ziv)

The residents lived there until the army set up a base nearby, when
the residents were pushed once more to Ein Samia, where they lived
until earlier this year. Over the years, they were harassed by the
army, which confiscated their sheep. Then the settlers took the
mantle.

“They come at night and throw stones when the children are
sleeping,” said Hussein. “For five years we pleaded, but no one
heard us. We used to call the police — they would come and the
settlers would run away. In recent years, the police came and told us
that we were lying.”

The final straw was in May, when armed settlers arrived in the dead of
night and claimed that 37 of their sheep were stolen. They raided Ein
Samia looking for their sheep, but could not find them. The next day,
an Israeli police officer stopped a Palestinian shepherd from the
village walking near the main road and confiscated his sheep, claiming
they were stolen.

“We live off the sheep,” Hussein explained. “The army protects
the settlers. Even if justice is on your side, they will imprison you
for a week or two and take NIS 10,000 as bail.”

Hussein said the Israeli authorities and the settlers share the same
goal: “Expulsion. They want no one to stay here. They want to expel
all the Palestinians from the country, like they did in 1948. We lost
everything. Families have been separated and scattered. The children
don’t sleep there because of the settlers. There is safety here, but
there is nothing to live from.”

On August 17, representatives from the Civil Administration, the army,
and the Border Police arrived at Ein Samia’s abandoned school,
destroyed it, and loaded the ruins and other remnants from the site
onto trucks. Activists believe that the demolition was intended to
prevent tours in the area by diplomats and journalists.

Israeli authorities demolishing the school at Ein Samia after the
Palestinian community fled under the threat of settler violence, West
Bank. (Oren Ziv)

The razing of the school was also carried out just a few days after a
settler outpost in the area was demolished
[[link removed]] with
the approval of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — who is also the
Defense Ministry official charged with overseeing the occupied
territories — perhaps for the purpose of showing “balance.”
Following the school’s demolition, Smotrich released a statement
[[link removed]] saying that “the State of
Israel will not allow illegal construction and Arab takeover of the
open areas.”

‘ONE FARM GUARDS THOUSANDS OF DUNAMS’

The flight of these Palestinian communities is part-and-parcel of
Israel’s colonization of the occupied territory. In this particular
region, the process is centered around the settlement of Kochav
HaShachar and its various outposts, which have been springing up over
the past few decades.

Some of these outposts move around, are evacuated by Israeli
authorities from time to time, and then re-established. Yet they have
all, by various means, contributed to the gradual settler takeover of
the area, whether through the establishment of farms, vineyards, the
blocking of Palestinian roads, or the sight of caravans as new
satellite outposts.

Kochav HaShahar was established in the late 1970s, and is today home
to approximately 2,500 Jewish Israelis. In the 1990s, the outposts of
Ma’ale Shlomo and Mitzpe Kramin were created. In 1998, Kochav
HaShahar’s gate was moved a few miles west, blocking the
agricultural area around the settlement, and consequently access to
thousands of acres of Palestinian land.

Over the next 20 years, settlers built a number of additional outposts
surrounding Kochav HaShahar, including Baladim, Maoz Esther, and
Ma’ale Ahuviya. In 2004, Einat Kedem was established in the
southeast, close to Jericho. Malachei HaShalom was built in 2014 in a
partially abandoned military area, just east of the settlement of
Shiloh, the first in a series of outposts established to the east. In
February of this year, the Israeli government decided to formalize the
outpost, turning it into an official settlement.

Neriya’s Farm, a herding outpost owned by Neriya Ben Pazi, was
established in 2018 south of the Rimonim settlement, and has taken
over thousands of acres of land. It has several subsidiary outposts,
including two in the direction of Jericho: Zohar’s Farm, and an
outpost established in memory of Harel Masood, one of four victims of
a shooting attack in the settlement of Eli in June.

The settler outpost of Malachei Hashalom in the West Bank. (Oren Ziv)

Another outpost, Micah’s Farm, which was established in 2018 at the
foot of Kochav HaShachar overlooking Ein Samia, relocated in 2020
close to the now depopulated village of Ras a-Tin. The army then
prevented the Palestinian villagers from crossing the Allon road to
access their own lands. Palestinians in the nearby villages of
Al-Mughayyir and Kufr Malik organized protests following the
outpost’s relocation.

Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed three Palestinians in
Al-Mughayyir in the past few years. In July 2022, a settler shot and
killed 16-year-old Amjad Abu Alia; in December 2020, during a Friday
demonstration, an army sniper shot 15-year-old Ali Abu Alia in the
stomach, killing him; and in January 2019, during an attack on the
village by armed settlers, 38-year-old Hamdi Na’asan, a married
father of two, was shot in the back and killed.

In 2020, settlers founded the Rashash Farm outpost northeast of
Malachei HaShalom, along the border of Firing Zone 906. A vineyard was
recently established south of Malachei HaShalom, and a tent was placed
on a road that Palestinian farmers use to reach grazing lands in an
area known as Dalia, but the settlers now prevent them from using it.
Several new outposts were also established around existing outposts,
some of which were evacuated and then repopulated.

In this same area, there are also settlements close to Route 90,
including Yitav, Na’aran, Gilgal, Tomer, and Petza’el, home to
around 1,300 settlers altogether.

“The settlers have managed to create an area of tens of thousands of
dunams, which were used as grazing land by the communities that were
expelled, and are today empty of Palestinians,” explained Kerem
Navot’s Dror Etkes, citing Firing Zone 906 as an example. “For the
settlers, this [takeover] is a very significant achievement, which
they are trying to reproduce elsewhere.”

Indeed, according to data from Kerem Navot, as of last year, settlers
have taken control of approximately 238,000 dunams of the West Bank
under the pretext of agriculture and grazing. In a speech at an online
conference hosted by the Amana settler organization in 2021, the
group’s CEO Ze’ev (Zambish) Hever explained
[[link removed]] the
logic behind this method: “Construction [alone] takes up little
space, due to economic considerations. We reached 100 square
kilometers after more than 50 years. [Farm outposts] have more than
twice the area of built-up settlements … One farm guards thousands
of dunams of land.”

Israeli settler with grazing sheep near the Palestinian village of Ein
al-Rashash. (Oren Ziv)

‘THE BORDER MOVES EVERY MONTH’

Following the exodus of the past few months, the Palestinian community
of Ein al-Rashash, made up of 18 families totaling just under 100
residents, is now bearing the brunt of Israeli settler violence, with
the nearby outposts of Malachei HaShalom and Rashash Farm preventing
the residents from grazing their sheep.

“From here to Fasayil and Auja, there is nobody,” said resident
Eid Salama Zawara. “We lived here for almost 30 years in peace. Four
years ago, they established the outpost, and then everything changed.
At first, the settlers said: ‘This is the border, I will graze here
and you there.’ But the border moves every month, and now they are
already arriving at the doorstep of our homes with their sheep, going
inside them, and we can’t go out.”

Gesturing to the surrounding hills, he added: “There is room here
for all the sheep in Israel and the West Bank to graze. But they [the
settlers] don’t want anyone else to graze here.”

A significant attack occurred on June 24, when several settlers
entered the village and then called for reinforcements. “After that,
the army came,” said Zawara. “We calmed down, because we thought
they would protect us, but that didn’t happen. The soldiers
dispersed the young people with [tear] gas and rubber [bullets], and
at the same time settlers broke windows, smashed solar panels, and
started setting fire to a house.

“They beat an old man with a stick, and broke the radio he listens
to every day,” Zawara continued. “The soldiers stood aside. A
police officer arrived and took a photo of the wounded man, but they
arrested three young [Palestinian] men from the village.”

The elder who was assaulted, Haj Salama, told +972: “Since the
attack, I’ve been afraid. I don’t sleep at night. I get scared
every time a car passes by.”

The belongings and remains of homes of Palestinian families in Ein
Samia, West Bank. (Oren Ziv)

Zawara is certain that the settlers are intending a similar fate for
Ein al-Rashash as that which befell the now depopulated neighboring
villages. “They want us to move somewhere else, but everywhere we go
there are more settlers — so where do we go?”

Residents of al-Ma’arajat are facing similar challenges nearby. Elia
Maliha, a 28-year-old communications student from the community, told
+972: “Fifty families have lived here for 40 years. We get water in
tankers, the houses are made of tin sheets, and most of them have been
demolished [by the authorities] in the past. A demolition order was
also issued for the school. The children who finish 12th grade go to
study at university or college, but the livelihood here is all from
the herds.

“People here love animals and want to live in peace,” she
continued. “In the last two years, since the outpost was
established, life has changed. The settlers are throwing carcasses in
grazing areas, entering houses night and day, opening cupboards and
spilling their contents, rummaging through the refrigerator, and more
… But we have strength and courage, we’re staying, and with the
help of steadfastness, we don’t want to become al-Qabun or Ein
Samia.”

On July 27, two jeeps with masked Israeli soldiers entered the
community and searched the houses. Two days later, an armed settler
came, accompanied by soldiers. “They claimed that something was
stolen from them, and they wanted to conduct a search,” Maliha
recounted. A video from the incident shows an armed settler entering
residential tents and sheep pens, with soldiers guarding him and
silencing Palestinians who demanded that he leave.

Two other communities southward are also in danger. One is
al-Baqa’a, home to 33 people including 21 minors. On July 10, most
of the community fled following weeks of attacks by settlers; days
earlier, settlers had burned down one of the structures belonging to a
family that had temporarily left due to the violence. After the
exodus, the Civil Administration demolished the nearby settler
outpost, but it has since been rebuilt. Nearby, in the community of
Wadi a-Seeq, the residents fear that they are next in line; some of
them have already fled. 

‘THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS BEING MOBILIZED FOR THE SETTLERS’

“This is not a 16-year-old boy deciding on his own what to do,”
Etkes explained about the settler outposts. “People plan and think
about where and what to build. There is legal support, money,
experience, and motivation. And right now the political conditions are
a dream. They’re exploiting this opportunity [while] at the height
of their power. This would not be happening without the support of the
most instrumental entities on the ground, such as the regional
councils, Smotrich’s settlement administration, [and] the Civil
Administration.

Armed Israeli settlers near the outpost of Malachei HaShalom, West
Bank. (Oren Ziv)

“We haven’t seen such boldness before, coming into communities and
attacking inside people’s homes,” Etkes continued. “The whole
system is being mobilized in order to allow settlers to take over
several thousand dunams.”

According to a report on Israel’s Channel 12, Smotrich is advancing
a takeover plan for Area C, which includes legalizing and expanding
outposts that have already been established, and building new ones. On
August 20, for example, the government decided to allocate land to the
Mevo’ot Yericho outpost, close to the area discussed above, which
was formally recognized in 2019.

The expulsion of residents appears to be part of the “Battle for
Area C [[link removed]],” a
campaign announced by Israeli right-wing groups and politicians
several years ago. Settler organizations have long made a concerted
push to prevent Palestinian development in Area C, which comprises 60
percent of the West Bank and is home to most of its open and
agricultural land — and all of the settlements. Israel’s full
security and administrative control over Area C means that any
Palestinian construction needs Israeli approval, which is almost never
granted.

Israeli governmental and non-governmental bodies alike have been
steadily making their case for the continued takeover of Area C. In
June 2021, the Intelligence Ministry published an extensive report in
which it discussed the 2009 “Fayyad Plan” — named after Salam
Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister at the time — which included
a program to assert control over Area C and acquire European support
for the Palestinian communities there.

A report a couple of months later from Regavim, a far-right settler
group co-founded by Smotrich, claimed that the building of schools was
part of a Palestinian plan to control Area C. Last year, Israel’s
Settlement Ministry transferred around NIS 20 million to local Israeli
councils in Area C, to be used for gathering intelligence on
Palestinian construction in the region.

In 2017, Smotrich published his “Decisive Plan
[[link removed]]” for taking over
the West Bank; although the document does not mention Area C, he wrote
that Israel must take action to realize “our national ambition for a
Jewish state from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”

Religious Zionism Chairman Bezalel Smotrich stands above the
Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, West Bank, March 21,
2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Doing so, Smotrich stressed, would require “a political-legal act of
imposing sovereignty on all Judea and Samaria [the Biblical name for
the West Bank]” while simultaneously establishing new cities and
towns; further developing infrastructure to be on a par with that
inside the Green Line; and encouraging “tens or hundreds of
thousands” of Israelis to move to the West Bank. “In this way,”
he argued, “we will be able to create a clear and irreversible
reality on the ground.”

Although the idea of official Israeli annexation was temporarily
shelved in 2020, in practice the authorities and settlers alike have
been implementing it in areas where Palestinian communities have been
forcibly displaced.

Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, an urban planner with the NGO Bimkom, which works
with communities in the area, said: “The real threat is not the
demolition orders, but settler violence. Of the 50 communities we
looked into in the area, 20 are most at risk, and some have already
left. The state has been trying to ‘clean up’ the area since 2014,
without success — procedural, diplomatic, and legal measures have
prevented it. 

“Now the state has gone from actively trying to deport
[Palestinians] to passively ignoring the actions of the settlers,”
Cohen-Lifshitz continued. “It’s much more convenient, and more
successful.”

A number of Israeli and international activists have been going to the
area regularly for years, and are trying to stand with the Palestinian
residents against the settlers. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, one such
activist, described Israeli policy like this: “Everywhere there are
three strikes: threats and violence; economic damage caused by
preventing [shepherds] from accessing grazing land; and backing from
the state — by demolitions and confiscations, and unwillingness to
offer any protection. 

“The police told me that there is nothing legally prohibiting
settlers from walking around next to [Palestinians’] houses or even
inside tents,” Ascherman continued, warning: “If we don’t do
anything, more and more communities will leave. We need to be
physically present on the ground.”

The IDF Spokesperson declined a request for comment.

_A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local
Call. Read it __here_
[[link removed]]_._

_OREN ZIV is a photojournalist, reporter for Local Call, and a
founding member of the Activestills photography collective._

_Did you appreciate this article from +972 MAGAZINE? Here’s how you
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_We are in an unprecedented and dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
Israeli extreme right government has made its plans crystal clear. It
wants carte blanche to shoot-to-kill Palestinians on both sides of the
Green Line, legalize every settlement outpost, dismantle the
independence of the judicial system, deport African asylum seekers,
delegitimize human rights activists, and silence the free press._

_This is an escalation we all should resist. But it is not an
aberration or a bug. For the past 12 years, we at +972 have been
warning against the poisonous outcomes of Israeli society’s growing
racism, the entrenched occupation, and an increasingly normalized
siege on Gaza._

_Our work has never been more crucial. And as dark as it seems, there
are still glimmers of hope. The popularity of outright fascism has
woken people up, both in Israel-Palestine and across the world, to the
dangerous repercussions of what may soon come. Palestinians and
Israelis who believe in a just future are already organizing and
strategizing to put up the fight of their lives._

_Can we count on your support? +972 Magazine is the leading media
voice of this movement, a place where Palestinian and Israeli
journalists and activists can tell their stories without censorship.
Our journalism disrupts the skewed mainstream coverage and aims to
promote justice and equality for everyone between the river and the
sea._

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