West Bank: The settlers come from all sides | EUROtoday

Little Muhammad hasn’t spoken a lot since final summer season. He solely makes use of one expression time and again. “Daddy’s blood,” the four-year-old blurts out at any time when he sees a purple object. Tears effectively up in his mom’s eyes when she talks about it.

“Then the images in his head come back,” says Hanady Hathaleen, sitting in a black full-face veil in entrance of her tin hut in Umm al Kheir, a Palestinian village within the south of the West Bank. She can also’t neglect the sight from final July. How the Israeli settlers drove by the village with their excavator till one in all them pulled out his gun and pointed it at her husband, Awdah Hathaleen. How Awdah sank to the bottom after the shot, the purple pool of blood round him getting greater and larger. The screams of the youngsters, the malicious appears of the Israeli troopers, the ready for the ambulance that lastly took Awdah away.

“There, on the ground, Muhammad saw his father for the last time,” says Hathaleen. When the Israeli military handed over her husband’s physique ten days later, the physique was in even worse situation. She did not need to should say goodbye to Muhammad and his two brothers.

Violence by Jewish settlers within the West Bank, as proven not solely by the case of Awdah Hathaleen, has exploded in current months. Wherever you go within the space today, residents discuss humiliating harassment, brutal assaults and vehicles being set on hearth. Entire olive groves are destroyed, herds of livestock are stolen, and males, ladies and youngsters are typically severely injured. Others, like Awdah Hathaleen, have it even worse. Many Palestinians not dare to go away the home after darkish. Those who do attempt to at the very least discover out about acute risks by way of WhatsApp and Telegram teams.

“We have always had problems with settlers here,” says Hanady Hathaleen. She factors her head within the course of the yellow iron gate that cuts by the road only a few hundred meters away. Just behind it, Israeli flags mark the doorway to the Carmel settlement. On the adjoining hill, one fashionable home sits subsequent to a different.

“They wanted to drive us out from the start,” says the younger widow concerning the Jewish settler group that has settled there for the reason that Nineteen Eighties and has now grown to a number of hundred residents. “But now others are coming, from all parts of the West Bank. They have weapons with them and they no longer recognize any borders at all.”

What Hathaleen describes is confirmed not solely by different Palestinians, but additionally by numerous stories from Israeli activists and worldwide human rights organizations. Even the Israeli military, which in any other case tends to downplay the issue, not too long ago admitted that assaults by radical settlers had elevated by 25 p.c final 12 months.

A senior officer not too long ago warned the Israeli newspaper Haaretz of serious threats to safety – and of a widespread violent escalation within the West Bank. The UN coordination authority OCHA documented over 1,800 assaults by settlers in 2025, by which greater than 830 Palestinians have been injured. During this era, 240 folks have been killed by Israeli safety forces or settlers – nearly one in 4 was a toddler.

“Awdah was a good person, he cared about others, he wanted peace for this country,” says Hanady Hathaleen about her husband, whose dying she nonetheless can not perceive. A photograph of the thirty-one-year-old is pinned to the entrance door of her tin shack. He grins fortunately into the digicam, his brown curls hidden beneath a baseball cap. In addition to his job as an English instructor, the younger Palestinian labored on the crew of the documentary movie “No Other Land,” which focuses on settler violence and displacement within the West Bank. The Israeli-Palestinian co-production, which premiered on the Berlinale 2024, acquired nice consideration not solely in Germany. In 2025 it received an Oscar for greatest documentary movie.

“Awdah wanted to show the world what was happening here,” says Hathaleen, her voice crammed with satisfaction. But that did not assist him both. “They simply shot him without him doing anything. And in the end the perpetrator is walking free while we Palestinians are being arrested.”

The arrests that Hathaleen alludes to additionally spark outrage in the remainder of the small village. Eleven Palestinian residents have been held in Ofer jail in southern Israel for a number of days after the killing of Awdah Hathaleen, with their fingers tied collectively and blindfolded. The perpetrator, Yinon Levi, alternatively, was launched after a number of hours regardless of overwhelming proof.

A video recording from July 28, 2025 clearly exhibits the settler in Umm al Kheir drawing his pistol and firing the deadly shot at Awdah. None of the Palestinians round him are armed. An Israeli court docket nonetheless dominated that Levi acted in “self-defense.” A home arrest that was initially ordered was suspended early after three days.

Hanady Hathaleen finds it troublesome to bear that her husband’s assassin can now stroll by Umm al Kheir once more with none blame. The settler retains showing within the village, laughing triumphantly or insulting the residents. A number of weeks in the past he even destroyed the electrical energy and water pipes. It took days for the group to have electrical energy once more.

“I’m afraid for my children,” says Hathaleen, “we all know how dangerous Levi is.” The settler can also be no stranger internationally. Because of his brutal assaults on Palestinians, he has been on the sanctions lists of the European Union and Great Britain since 2024. Former United States President Joe Biden additionally imposed sanctions towards him. The punitive measures have been lifted once more beneath the present administration of Donald Trump.

The Israeli authorities itself appears to have fewer issues with Jewish settlers like Yinon Levi. Convictions following violent assaults are solely not often achieved. Hanady Hathaleen additionally blames the proximity between the Israeli military and the settlers. “They are friends, they protect each other,” says the Palestinian. With the fixed confrontations in Umm al Kheir, she will hardly inform who’s a settler and who’s a soldier.

Human rights organizations, but additionally Israeli troopers themselves, report related circumstances. Since Hamas’ terrorist assault on Israel on October 7, 2023, hundreds of settlers have been drafted into so-called regional protection models within the West Bank to interchange troops deployed to the Gaza Strip. The Israeli state supplied the usually excessive ideologues, together with criminals, with rifles and uniforms.

In 2024, right-wing extremist Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir boasted of getting distributed 120,000 weapons to “Israeli citizens” within the first 12 months of the warfare alone. This had dramatic penalties for a lot of Palestinians. A number of weeks in the past, the UN warned that the “increasing phenomenon of ‘soldier-settlers'” was more and more blurring the road between state and settler energy – and thereby selling impunity for perpetrators.

“There is no one to protect us here,” says Hanady Hathaleen, who sees this as a transparent technique of the Israeli state. Extreme, principally national-religious Israelis have all the time strived to convey “Judea and Samaria,” as they name the world occupied since 1967, into Jewish possession. Under the present authorities of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, annexation plans are progressing at an ever-increasing tempo. In the previous three years alone, the development of just about 70 new settlements has been accepted. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich not too long ago celebrated an “unprecedented record”. The present state finances has earmarked the equal of over $800 million to additional advance the enlargement.

In addition, the settlers have discovered different methods to displace the inhabitants within the West Bank. Through so-called outposts, typically a set of containers or caravans, the settler motion is penetrating deeper and deeper into Palestinian territory, even with out authorities permission. While the settlements are thought of unlawful internationally, however not beneath Israeli regulation, these outposts are additionally unlawful in Israel. Nevertheless, evictions nearly by no means happen. Once the outposts have grown to a sure measurement, the state typically grants subsequent approval. They are then typically integrated into close by settlements.

This strategy will be noticed in an nearly exemplary method in Umm al Kheir – as a result of right here too, the Carmel settlement is not the one menace to the residents.

Just a number of steps from the village’s small group heart are a number of pale yellow containers that the settlers led by Yinon Levi have arrange over the previous few months. Nothing greater than a makeshift fence separates them from the Palestinian homes. “They want to surround us from all sides,” says Hanady Hathaleen. The small outpost that has been created is already threatening to chop off the northern a part of the village from the homes within the south.

An Israeli court docket dominated in October that no additional containers might be arrange and that the present ones couldn’t be inhabited. However, the order was by no means enforced. The first settler households moved in way back, burned olive bushes and let their herds graze on Palestinian farmland. Now they’re constructing a highway to attach the outpost with the Carmel settlement.

They are additionally cheered on by distinguished friends, as a go to by Israeli Knesset member Zvi Sukkot final 12 months exhibits. The politician, who himself belongs to the settler motion, will be seen on a video in entrance of the yellow containers in Umm al Kheir. Through the fence he insults the Palestinian residents as Hamas terrorists and threatens to drive them out.

Hanady Hathaleen says she is going to do the whole lot she will to face up to the stress. And but she would not understand how for much longer they’ll maintain out in Umm al Kheir. In current years, Palestinian homes within the village have repeatedly been destroyed by the Israeli authorities as a result of there was no allow for building. According to a brand new order, the following 13 buildings will quickly comply with. “It’s just a matter of time,” says Hathaleen, who fears that she is going to quickly be on the road along with her three youngsters. “They took my husband away from me. Now they want to take the roof over my head too. Only for the settlers it goes on and on.”