Death, abuse and burnt olive trees - a year in the West Bank

Ramallah, occupied West Bank - A year of death and destruction in Gaza, has also been the deadliest year in the occupied West Bank - the common target, Palestinians.

Adding to the 41,800 Palestinians killed in Gaza under the guise of ‘war’, the Israeli occupation has also tightened its noose around the occupied West Bank. This includes mass land theft, a spike in the killings of Palestinians by both the Israeli army and illegal settlers, mass arbitrary arrests and detention, severe violations of the right to freedom of movement, forced displacement, and other oppressive actions.

At least 752 Palestinians, including 164 children, have been killed in the occupied West Bank between October 7, 2023 and October 13, 2024, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The majority of those were killed with live ammunition fired by Israeli soldiers and illegal settlers during daily lethal raids and attacks on Palestinian cities, towns and villages, while more than 20 percent of them were killed by Israeli army missile and drone strikes.

At least 6,250 other Palestinians were wounded during that time period, the Health Ministry said.

While the Israeli army was given the green light by the government to use drone strikes in the occupied West Bank back in September 2022, the use of aerial warfare since the war on Gaza has only intensified since last year.

Weeks after the Hamas armed operation against Israel on October 7, 2023, the first use of a warplane in the West Bank in more than two decades was recorded. Such attacks are being carried out in extremely densely populated areas, namely refugee camps. In one attack, an Israeli fighter jet struck a popular cafe in the Tulkarem refugee camp, killing 18 Palestinians, including two women and two children.

There have been more than 70 Israeli army air strikes on the occupied West Bank in the past year, according to Israeli media, including drones, armoured helicopters (such as the Apache) and fighter jets (such as the F-16). Burning land For the millions of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, violent land theft, arrests and physical abuse have become daily brutalities since October 7.

Several weeks into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the Najjar family lost some 25 dunams (25,000 square metres) of ancestral farming land.

In the small village of Yatma, south of Nablus city in the northern West Bank, occupation soldiers closed off the road that leads to the family’s plot and have prevented them from returning ever since.

“I spent my entire life on this land. My father inherited it from his grandfather,” Mohammad Najjar, a 28-year-old family member, told TRT World.

“In the past, this land was a main source of food for my family. It was the most fertile land in the area. They would grow wheat and beans among other things,” he continued.

During olive harvest season in October 2023, while the Najjars were on their lands picking olives, Israeli soldiers shouted at them and threatened them to leave at gunpoint. They did not provide any military order for the seizure of the land, nor any explanation.

“My father tried to go back by himself at one point. A group of young settlers, 15 and 16-year-olds descended onto our fields with the army behind them, and pushed my father out, claiming that it is their land,” continued Najjar.

Despite the passing of a year, Najjar says his father remains extremely upset and is “doing everything he can to retrieve the land”.

Land theft

Just over a month after October 7, settlers established at least four new illegal outposts and no less than nine settler-only roads leading to settlements, with many of them built on private Palestinian land.

In July 2024, the Israeli government announced the largest Palestinian land seizure in more than three decades, or since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1993.

The more Palestinian land seized, the farther away the possibility of an independent Palestinian state ever forming is.

Settlements, military bases, checkpoints and other infrastructure related to the occupation have turned the occupied West Bank into 165 disconnected enclaves suffering from severe development and movement restrictions.

Israeli officials are loud and clear about their intent. In September, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also has significant powers over the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank, clearly stated that his “life's mission is to build the Land of Israel and thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Abuse in custody

Ayman Ghrayyeb, 40, is an anti-occupation activist living in the village of Tammun south of Tubas in the Jordan Valley. He has spent the past decade helping Palestinians who are facing land theft as well as settler and army attacks, including by providing protection, connecting them with organisations that provide services, and documenting violations against them among other things.

While Ghrayyeb, a father of three, has regularly faced assault by soldiers and settlers due to his activism, he said that since October 7 the occupation operates with complete lawlessness.

Several weeks ago, he was arrested by the Israeli army in the Jordan Valley and taken to a military base, where he was heavily beaten and humiliated.

“They beat me with full force and assaulted me. They stepped on me with their boots and forced me to say things like ‘The people of Israel are alive,’ while filming me with their phones,” Ghrayyeb told TRT World.

“They hit me with their legs, with their rifles, and with rods, on all parts of my body including my head,” he continued. “They kept cursing me – both the male and female soldiers. They would threaten me with hurting my female family members including my mother.”

Three months earlier, Ghrayyeb was also arrested, but by a settler.

“[He] handed me over to the Israeli army. I was held at a military base for eight hours, before they transferred me to Ofer prison and detained me for four days.”

Arrests of Palestinians have increased at an unprecedented rate since the war on Gaza. Israeli forces carried out some 20,000 arrests, across Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, since October 2023, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society told TRT World.

Some 10,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons across the country, including hundreds of children and women. Many others, particularly from Gaza, have been forcibly disappeared and their whereabouts remain unknown.

Aside from the rise in arrests, the abuse of Palestinians in Israeli custody became significantly more violent and prevalent following October 7.

Videos and testimonies over the past year have exposed severe torture and abuse by Israeli forces, with soldiers beating, stepping on, abusing and humiliating detained Palestinians who have been blindfolded, stripped either partially or entirely, and have their hands cuffed, and in many cases, filming and mocking them.

Military checkpoints

Another aspect severely affecting daily life for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is military checkpoints, which have steadily increased from 700 to 800 in the space of a year, according to the UN.

Peppered between the occupied West Bank and Israel, and inside the West Bank itself, controlling the movement of millions of Palestinians, well before October 7, designed to stop and search and often taunt Palestinians travelling by.

“The increase in checkpoints, and the treatment of Palestinians by soldiers at checkpoints, have made matters much worse. It is very difficult to move around,” said Ghrayyeb.

Such obstacles cut off Palestinian cities and villages from one another, deeply affecting the territorial integrity of the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as the social fabric for the millions of residents there.

Travel times have more than tripled with major checkpoints and roads closed off, and have come to constitute suffocating daily pressure on residents.

Some of the checkpoints in the Jordan Valley are known to be particularly violent.

The Hamra checkpoint, which connects between Jericho, Nablus and the Jordan Valley, has become notorious for assault. “We call it the checkpoint of death,” Ghrayyeb said.

“The soldiers and settlers since October 7 act on their own accord. They do not follow any rules and they deal with matters on a personal level. They want revenge and to destroy everything related to Palestinians and Palestine.”