Israeli press| The settlement project celebrates its amazing success amidst condolences and sadness

Author Amira Hass

Under the guise of collective shock and horror due to the Hamas “massacre” on October 7, and under the guise of mourning, pain and fear for the fate of the kidnapped, settler militias are accelerating and expanding their attacks on Palestinian sheepherders’ communities in large areas of the West Bank, and are pushing Farmers were forced to leave their lands and farms, which happened more than once, with the support of the army. A gradual process that has been going on for almost 30 years, and is intensifying at this time: displacement in broad daylight, with the aim of completely “cleansing” about 60% of the West Bank lands from their original inhabitants.

“Individual” settlers arrive at every house, tent, and road that the discriminatory “Civil Administration” bureaucracy did not succeed in demolishing, and to every place where army orders did not succeed in preventing people from staying, where their villages existed before 1948, and they achieve this official goal: expanding areas of life. The Jews at the expense of the Palestinians.

On Saturday morning, a settler (soldier on leave) shot Bilal Saleh (40 years old), killing him, while he was out with his children to pick olives on their lands in the village of Al-Sawiya, south of Nablus. Two hours earlier, settlers expelled Palestinians who had gone out to pick olives in the villages of Jalud and Qasra, east of Al-Sawiya, and beat one of them. When I began writing the article on Saturday afternoon, the residents of the old village of Zanotta gathered their belongings and left the caves in which they live in the southwest of the Hebron Mountains. Inconveniences, threats, and denial of access to their grazing lands, as well as dwindling herds of livestock, have reached a peak over the past weeks. Now, the threats are more direct than necessary.

Last Saturday, additional news reached me: settlers and their livestock stormed the village of Al-Qawawis in the south in the morning hours, and the frightened women and children fled. In the afternoon hours, settlers and soldiers stormed the village of Janba in Masafer Yatta, climbed onto the roof of the mosque, and destroyed the speakers. Settlers also attacked families living in areas between the “Metzudat Yehuda” checkpoint and the “Green Line,” and confiscated their mobile phones, which led to a 16-year-old young woman’s hand being broken. After that, three of those who were attacked were arrested. Did the army arrest them? Or the settlers? Not yet known.

At around 10 p.m., it was noticed that settlers were cutting down olive trees south of Nablus. At the same time, soldiers and settlers confiscated surveillance cameras from inside a chicken farm in Qusra. In nearby Jalud, a group of Israeli-Jews, some armed, danced and sang near houses. At approximately 11 o'clock on Saturday night, they stormed Susya, assaulted the families, and gave them 24 hours to leave their homes. In the village of Tuba, settlers, some of them armed, stormed residents' homes and vandalized what was inside them, after they overturned the furniture and disappeared private items. At approximately one o'clock in the morning, the Israeli Jews loaded 6 sheep belonging to a widowed woman in a southern village, in addition to gas and a telephone, and stole them. This is only a partial list, because there is no precise documentation.

This is not about “natural revenge,” or about defense against “rioters allied with Hamas,” as the settlers’ lawyers would have you believe: this is an organized, thoughtful, and very well-financed plan that has a pattern that reveals its existence. The police did not search for the attackers, close the files, or conduct investigations. The army stood aside at first, and then, its soldiers began to participate. The Public Prosecution did not care, and the ministers visited with a smile. This has been the behavior of the authorities since the 1970s, and there is no reason to change it today.

Thousands of residents of the region are alone exposed to the violence of this conspiracy. Militia members close the roads leading to the gatherings, destroy water tanks using four-wheel drive vehicles, and storm and threaten the residents of tents and caves at night, clearly demanding that they leave. In addition, they beat, destroy property, and are even arrested on their own initiative. They also destroy solar panels and agricultural buildings, time after time, if the first message does not arrive.

Everything they did, gradually, in secret, became more and more public, and without disturbance, over decades, is now being multiplied by 100. Our army was sent to defend the settlers, so the towns of the “Gaza envelope” were left behind. Its soldiers have been accompanying the settlers in recent weeks during their attacks and, on occasion, completing the mission: they also block roads, demolish buildings and destroy crops, threaten, shoot, wound and kill. The settlement project - which was founded from the beginning on systematically harming human rights and Palestinians, and treating them as inferior and unnecessary - is now celebrating its astonishing success, amid days of mourning and mourning.

Will the settlement expansion process that took place under the cover of the Oslo Agreement and the displacement process from Area C to the heart of Areas A and B slide? Or is the right question when? When will armed settler militias begin penetrating villages and municipal neighborhoods (not just Nablus, Awarta, or the outskirts of Al-Bireh) and threatening residents?

Amira Hass is an Israeli journalist and author, mostly known for her columns in the daily newspaper Haaretz covering Palestinian affairs in Gaza and the West Bank, where she has lived for almost thirty years