Land Grab: Inside Israel’s Escalating Campaign for Control of the West Bank

Olive grove by olive grove, sheep pasture by sheep pasture, village by village, the idea of a Palestinian state is withering in the West Bank.

Armed Israeli settlers, often protected by soldiers, harass and attack Palestinian villagers daily, with the undisguised goal of driving them out.

Over the past two years, Israeli settlers have established a record number of  new outposts in the occupied territory. The goal is to win on the ground what might otherwise be lost at a negotiating table.

Palestinian communities that for centuries were part of a closely knit landscape, like these three near Ramallah are increasingly on their own, surrounded and isolated.

For grieving Palestinians, the desperation is growing. How much longer will they be able to stay?

Even as the war in Gaza commanded the world’s attention over the past two years, the facts on the ground were shifting in the West Bank, intensifying the battle for control of the lands of Bethlehem and Jericho, Ramallah and Hebron.

For many Palestinians, they are the foundation of a future state of their own — and a future peace. But for many Jews, they are a rightful homeland.

Extremist Jewish settlers and Palestinian farmers are the foot soldiers in this endless conflict, an extension of the war in 1948 that accompanied the establishment of Israel. And since the Oct. 7., 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian militants from Gaza, Israel’s far-right government has embraced a playbook of expanding settlements across the West Bank, transforming the region, piece by piece, from a patchwork of connected Palestinian villages into a collection of Israeli neighborhoods.

The unrelenting violent campaign by these settlers, that critics say is largely tolerated by the Israeli military, consists of brutal harassment, beatings, even killings, as well as high-impact roadblocks and village closures. These are coupled with a drastic increase in land seizures by the state and the demolition of villages to force Palestinians to abandon their land.

Many of the settlers are young extremists whose views go beyond even the far-right ideology of the government. They are not generally operating on direct orders from Israel’s military leadership. But they know the military frequently looks the other way and facilitates their actions.

In many cases, it is the military that forces Palestinians to evacuate or orders the destruction of their homes once settlers drive them to flee.

Here is a copy of the article if you want to read the rest and cannot access the original page.

Additional reading regarding settlers in the West Bank:

• Israel’s Cabinet approves 19 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank (Associated Press)
• The volunteers putting their bodies between Israel settlers and a Palestinian village (The Guardian)
• Israeli settlers attack Palestinians with impunity, halting West Bank olive harvest (PBS)
• West Bank violence is soaring, fueled by a capitulation of Israeli institutions to settlers’ interests (The Conversation)