Israel seizes record land in occupied West Bank under cover of Gaza war

Over the past three days, Jewish settlers from illegal Israeli settlements have gone on a rampage against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Backed by the Israeli military, armed settlers have killed at least two Palestinians, injured dozens and burned nearly a hundred houses in Palestinian villages and towns.

On April 12, 2024, over 1,500 illegal Jewish settlers descended on the Palestinian village of Al Mughayyer in Ramallah.

What triggered the attack was the discovery of the body of a 14-year-old Jewish settler in the nearby Malachei Hashalom outpost - even though there’s no evidence linking any Palestinian to the boy’s death.

But foreign activists and locals say encroachment of Palestinian lands intensified right after the October 7 war broke out between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.

The United Nations has criticised the Israeli military for allowing the Jewish settlers to attack Palestinians with impunity.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, has called for “the deployment of a protective presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, with the explicit mandate to prevent and (repel) attacks against civilians".

"The Israeli army has abundantly proven unwilling or unable to ensure that task," she said in a post on X.

In the last few days, settlers armed with military-grade rifles opened indiscriminate fire on Palestinians, killing 24-year-old Jehad Abu Alia and Omar Hamed, 17.

Settlers torched homes, set vehicles and trees on fire, and reduced entire farms to ashes in the villages of Abu Fallah, Qusra, Duma, Silwad, and Al Mazra'a Al Sharqiya.

A settler-military collusion

As the tension rose and settlers formed mobs to surround Palestinian areas, the Israeli military set up checkpoints and sealed off access roads to besieged villages, blocking ambulances and help from reaching the villagers.

Footage shared on social media shows Israeli soldiers providing cover to the settlers as they vandalised Palestinian property and set fire to a car in the village of Deir Dibwan near Ramallah.

Recent UN data shows that Israel has claimed a staggering 1,977 acres of land in the occupied West Bank since early October. This marks the largest land appropriation drive since the Oslo Accords were signed in the 1990s.

“This includes theft of land and resources, as well as killings carried out with impunity since 1967, all aimed at forcibly removing Palestinians from historical Palestine to fulfill the design of settler colonial project, which result in slow genocide,” says Mick Bowman, an Irish activist who has had witnessed recent settler violence.

Israeli authorities have given the green light for the construction of 3,500 new housing units in the occupied Palestinian territory.

These settlements, deemed illegal under international law, continue to expand, further entrenching the Israeli occupation.

Approximately 725,000 Jewish settlers reside in 176 Jewish-only settlements and 186 outposts throughout the occupied West Bank.

"I witnessed this violence firsthand during my time in the West Bank, particularly in the village of Attiwani in the Masafer Yatta area of the South Hebron Hills, where I spent four months from the end of September 2023 until early February," says Bowman.

Working for the International Solidarity Movement, Bowman had gone to live in Palestinian communities because they felt threatened by illegal settlers. For several nights, Bowman and his team saw how settlers treated the Palestinians.

"We hoped that our presence might deter settlers and the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) from coming, and if they did come, might mitigate some of the extreme violence," he says.

"However, that was often not the case. I witnessed violent raids on houses by settlers, where they beat male members of households and threatened to kill them while pointing guns at their faces."