"Ethnic cleansing by a thousand cuts": an update from the South Hebron Hills

So, October 22nd, in 2024, around 9am, a young settler came from the outposts, about 1km away from Tuba. He showed up at my Nipar's house while my Nipar's were feeding their flock in the morning. And he just stood in front of the door, the house, and started to do provocation. And harassing the sheep while the sheep were eating and stopping the sheep from moving around. This is Ali Awad. If you're a regular listener of unsettled, you've likely heard Ali's voice before. Ali is a 26-year-old activist and translator living in Tuba, a village in a region of the West Bank, called Masafriyata, in the South Headburn Hills. Ali's livelihood and well-being have always been vulnerable to Israeli settler violence and threats of expulsion by the Israeli government. But since October 7th, 2023, it's been like nothing he's ever seen. To my friends, to brothers, who are my Nipars and my friends, started to film in video and try to stop him from scaring the sheep. And also, meanwhile, they were trying to call the Israeli police to show up to stop him from attacking the animals. My little cousin knocked at my door and told me the settlers are attacking our Nipars. So as an activist, I carried my camera and also I know took him a little bit in Hebrew, so I rushed to try to document. A van of soldiers showed up at the scene at my Nipars house and they saw in the videos on the camera of my friends that he was harassing the sheep and also he was holding a stick. And he hit my friend in his mouth and there was blood on his mouth. But all of that was not a clear proof that what the settler was claiming is wrong. He just said to the soldiers that they attacked me. So the soldiers immediately prepared like the bullets of their guns and came towards us. There were seven other people with Ali. One of them was his 83-year-old grandfather. They pushed us to the ground and they started to search our bodies, our clothes. One soldier, he told me, he prepared like the gun in front of me and he told me, you have just one word left. If you see another word, I'm going to explode your head. Eventually, the Israeli police came. The Israeli settler claimed he'd been attacked by two of Ali's neighbors, so the officers arrested them. Even though they had proof that the opposite was true, it was the settler who attacked them. But the police confiscated the camera with their video evidence before taking them to the police station. Later, the officers investigated and determined that for themselves, that Ali's neighbors had done nothing wrong and released them. But the whole incident took multiple hours and this is happening all the time. Ali's village, Tuba, is in a part of the West Bank called Area C, where Israel has full civil and military control. This is where most of the Palestinian hurting villages are and where most of the Israeli settlements are located too. Since October 7, threats from settlers against Palestinians in Area C have increased. In November of 2023, unsettled released an episode featuring residents of the villages of Susia and Umul Khair about the violence they were facing. This fall, we reached out to Ali to get an update from the ground. As an activist and translator, Ali is often in different villages in the area. We spoke by Zoom on October 15th. It's 9 a.m. for me. It's 4 p.m. for you. So I'm catching you at the middle to the end of your day. What have you been up to? So I was coordinating a project today of fixing a couple of caves for families because they are the only option of much safer housing and shelters for SMSFriata. So I was trying to transport some materials for making the cave. So this is what they have been doing today until now. The reason that caves are some of the safest places for Palestinian residents of Masafriata is because the Israeli government regularly issues demolition orders of these villages built homes. Ali's village, Tuba, has been subject to regular threats of demolition from the Israeli government. That's because in the 1980s, Israel declared his village as part of a military firing zone. You can hear more from Ali about this in our previous episodes, called the campaign to save Masafriata and playgrounds for the military. Even though Tuba is part of a military firing zone, there are settlements right next to it that Israel doesn't count as part of it. And the settlers who live there are the ones who've been harassing Ali and his neighbors. After October 7th, Israel's National Security Minister, Ehtamar Ben-Gveer, started arming Israeli settlers in the West Bank, in the name of security. Now, those settlers who regularly attack Ali and his neighbors are armed with weapons provided by the Israeli government in uniform, patrolling the area. The settlers today, the amount of the guns that you see around that they can invade the Palestinian villages and homes with it at any time, it's unbearable and unlivable. And it's in the hands of settlers that we know that they are sometimes like maybe they are underage children or people who are really crazy and hold a lot of anger against the Palestinians. So, who control where they decide like to shoot? One of the settlers, for example, that used like to harass me like even while I'm raising my ship as a civilian. Before October 7th, now he's a soldier like that stop me at the checkpoint and take my ID. So, can you imagine that we used like to call the army and the police sometimes in order to stop some violent settlers? So, after October 7th like we have, we start to see that those violent settlers, they are the army like the one that attack you is the one that's supposed to stop the attack against you. And this is also like gives them the ability while they are wearing like the uniform that they are soldiers and behaving like soldiers to harass like the Palestinians without accountability. And many incidents happen where some of the settlers soldiers invaded like the village tortured the people, detained them for no reason. The Israel Civil Administration which is like the office of the Israeli army that control areas see now doesn't have power like the settlers who are wearing the uniform in the field. If you get inside the villages of Mesaferiapa, you will see that the people are closed between their homes. You will have just like a road that goes inside the village and it is not safe, it might be a checkpoint by those soldiers. Soldiers who should be like supposedly reserving for the security which say, but the game is really colonial game and really like a way of ethnic cleansing. We have heard about forcible transfers, we have heard about villagers in Mesaferiapa who have been forced to leave their villages due to this kind of harassment. Do you know people who have had to leave their villages and can you talk about that? Yeah, I mean when we talk about like villagers fleeing from their homes, this is like the the phenomenon of settlers violent groups having the flocks and stealing some of the flocks from the Palestinians. And using them as a way to destroy the Palestinian crops and to make the Palestinians have no source of income, the village of Zalota for example. Settlers who were sanctioned by the US and other European countries after October 7, they focused their harassment against like the village. So 20 days after October 7, the people have to back up and move to other areas where it can be safer to them. So people like have different thoughts from the village of Zalota that they say the world started, the settlers might kill us or shoot us without accountability. We have no any source of a protection, so we have to figure out a way where we can be safe and where we can continue on our lives. So we have to move either maybe for a few weeks until this war finished and later the situation will be quieter. But what the settlers did after the people left, they came with Bill Dozos and destroyed all of their homes. So once the people took their flocks and returned back to the village, the civil administration even didn't allow them to build a fence for their sheep. Like I was visiting them, gold there, people sitting in the nowhere, just sitting with their sheep and with the children with everybody on the rubble of the houses. And there is a video that the Israeli Civil Administration officer said, he said, "Do you see these two stones, you are not allowed to put them on each other, this is illegal." For villagers in the south abron hills who have left entirely, can you say more about where they're going and what their life looks like now? Many people go to area A, which is looks like big towns and very concentrated buildings, whether it's not easy for farmers coming from open area with hundreds of sheep to live in there. So many of the people have to get rid out of the flocks in order to just care about their shelters and to move there. Some people like have to borrow a land next to these towns where they can build tents, some barns and live there. And I see many people who bought them the land, it seems that you are staying here for long, so I need my land back. So there is nowhere where people can maintain living away from their lands. The environment where you grow up, it shapes you. People here are, most of them are shepherds, farmers, like my own family. So moving to area A, maybe you can rent a room where you can have a bed, but which kind of job you can do, and which kind of life and broken soil you will have for losing your own animal and your own land and your own life style. I have met many families throughout the West Bank who lost their homes. I get in a very mental issue for weeks after listening to how life of people here got destroyed. How they lost everything, their future and the future of their children became dark and having no actual solution, how they can feed their children or how they can actually raise their children. So you are saying that it has an impact on you and your mental health to go and talk to these people who have been forced out of their villages? Yeah, from because this is something that I am going through, that I am trying to protect and I am trying not to leave the village of Tooba, but I am trying to stay at home because I won't like to save my family life. So once when I talk to these people, once I am translating in the same time, I receive a message from my family that a settler is invading our village, grazing our crops, our barley or our wheat, destroying our water tanks, cutting our water network and electricity, burning a house in a nearby village. This is what the settlers is trying to end us up in. Has anyone left Tooba and do you ever think about leaving yourself? Luckily no one of us left until now and no, myself I don't think I want to leave. I am still trying with all my body and with all my the way that I can try to stay home, but in front of all of this power all concentrated against us as a Palestinian people, how can we maintain living and staying at home? And last year I got my ankle, a broken and this year I also got the other ankle broken. Last year by the army during an arrest and this year by the settlers. So you can understand like yes, maybe you can ask me are you thinking of leaving or other people are leaving, but people who are going through those circumstances, it's a daily nightmare. I'm saying I can't give like a clear answer that I'm trying to stay home. Since October 7th, traveling between different villages in Maasafriyata has been severely restricted and Ali is the only one in his village with a car. So he spends a lot of his time just making sure the village is able to get their basic needs met. All my life is just a reaction to what the settlers are planning to do today. I have to drive children to the hospital because we don't have one here in our village. I have to drive people and elderly people to rush them even sometimes women who has to give the birth. My car is functioning as the ambulance for the entire community and the taxi for the entire community, the delivery guy for the groceries and the basic needs for the people. And even roads that connect my village to buy are not allowed to be fixed. So even normal cars, normal buses and vans can't drive inside the village of to buy. And all the expenses must be in always giving regular mantances for this car to stay alive. And from the other side, I have to be all the day ready with the camera to film and to call in the authorities against the settlers' harassment trying to steal our land and our crops and our water. So this is like the circumstances of how life looks like. It's a decision of when we either staying or leaving, we need the word like to say for those who are attacking us who gives you the right to destroy someone's life. All of this has been happening to you while I imagine you're also watching what's happening in Gaza. What's that looks for you? Yeah, what it feels like to see people getting burned alive inside refugee camps and people of Gaza like they are part of the Palestinian people where we are both under the same occupation. So first of all it gets me very scared and very theorized about what's like the future of us. Like I'm really right now trembling just seeing those words when I think about the future and what's even this evening is holding for us. Whatever Israel can do against us freely and frankly in front of all of the words, I feel no security, I feel not protected, I feel no value as a human being. I am very worried about my family watching what's happening in Gaza and I'm very worried about all of us as a Palestinians people that sometimes like we say that the solution didn't start yet, the solution is that when we all thrown in the sea or thrown out of our land. A few weeks after speaking to Ali, I spoke to a friend of his, Maya Rosen. Maya has also been unsettled before. She's an American activist and journalist based in Jerusalem. She's currently the Israel-Palestine Fellow at Jewish Currents. Maya does a kind of activism called Protective Presence. She goes to parts of the West Bank where settlers are known to harass and attack Palestinian villagers and accompanies them on tasks like hurting and walking children to school. Have you been continuously going to the region this past year and has the work look different since right after October 7th? I have been going this past year. It took a few weeks after October 7th to be able to go, roads were closed and things were so violent and so uncertain. There were people who went in the immediate days after but it was a very tense and difficult time. But starting in November at some point and then up until now, I have been going to Masafriyata. And there are ways in which the kind of work we're doing is still very similar to what we were doing before, even if the sort of violence is amped up. We're still going out with shepherds and helping with the olive harvest and accompanying school children to school and sleeping over if there's a threat of demolition or a specific sort of harassment. I think one thing that's changed is that it feels much more dangerous to be out and about and to be driving around. And so it's really much harder to see people and that's been really challenging that I think it used to feel like I would go to Masafriyata even for the day. You know, it was easy to kind of pop around between villages until like see all of my friends on one go and that feels a lot harder now. It feels like you go to a village and it's much more staying put. For example, the last few times I've been in Masafriyata, I haven't been able to see Ali because of where he lives. It's difficult to get around and it's dangerous. Can you say a little bit more about the danger you're describing? You're saying that it's palpable that it's just more dangerous to ride from village to village. What does that look like? What does that mean? So it's always been dangerous there, which is part of why it's a little bit hard to describe or to quantify because before there were settlers walking around with guns. And they're still settlers walking around with guns. I think the difference is one, there are more guns because of Ben Gavir and all sorts of new legislation that has increased the amount of weapons. I think settlers feel emboldened and entitled. And lastly, many of those settlers now actually have authorization from the military to be acting as members of the Israeli military. And so local settlers who Palestinian communities whom we work with recognize who are the people who have terminated them for years now all of a sudden show up wearing army uniforms and are the ones in charge. It also seems kind of confusing if the settlers are empowered to act as soldiers. I mean, who has the authority in that situation if you call the police on someone who has the power of an idea of soldier? I mean, who's with the authority to de-escalate or to hold any one accountable in that situation? Exactly. Yeah, I think that is why that's not always a winning strategy. I think it depends on like exactly where you are and who the settlers are and the community's history with the horses that big. So those calculations are being made by the villagers. Yeah, and they will always say if they want us to call the police or not or if that's something that's helpful and generally they have the experience to know whether it's something that could be useful. And in some ways, it's the same thing that sometimes filing a police complaint is important so that there's a paper trail that this thing happened and can be used even as evidence later against some sort of perpetrator even if there's not going to be justice in the moment. But that's a difficult calculus. And because the police and army are not fair or just bodies, it can also mean that calling them puts Palestinians in danger. That they'll come inside with the settlers who are attacking. So it's a very complicated thing. You know, I feel like what I keep hearing from people on the ground is like we have to pay attention to what's happening in the West Bank to this head. This will have major consequences for the future. And I'm wondering what that is. What are we in danger of missing in the West Bank that could have these far reaching consequences? Well, we're all appropriately looking at Gaza. Yeah, I have a few main concerns there. One is the possibility of the West Bank being used as like a playing card in some sort of deal around Gaza. So specifically now that Trump has been elected and has said that he wants to end the war in Gaza by the time of his inauguration, it wouldn't at all surprise me if the way he does that is to trade it for West Bank annexation or something like that. I think in his upcoming presidency, we're going to see a severe escalation of the situation in the West Bank that could be truly catastrophic. And I think that could be in interplay with the situation in Gaza. I think also the situation in the West Bank is really, really dire. Also economically in a way that exceeds what I've seen in my time working in these communities that the level of need for even basic necessities and food is much greater than anything. I had seen pre-Actober 7th, which is for a variety of reasons, but largely that people aren't able to work. And so there's no income. And Israel doesn't seem to have learned the lesson that you can only keep the lid on the boiling pot for so long. And the kind of escalation that it would be possible to see in the West Bank could be one that would be very detrimental to a future of justice for all people living here. Can you just say more about why it is that people can't work? Partially, it's because it's so hard to get around the West Bank right now that it's if people work in other parts of the West Bank because of road closures and checkpoints, they're not able to get to their jobs. In large part, it's because Israel canceled work permits for Palestinians who worked inside 48 in various jobs. So there are communities where that's a really important economic foundation for their entire extended families. And those people have not been able to return to their jobs. And for Palestinians who live and work in the West Bank, the threat of settler violence also impacts their ability to tend to their farms and make their livelihood. This has been particularly true for olive farmers, around 100,000 Palestinian households rely on the olive harvest for their income. But settler attacks and intimidation have blocked farmers from harvesting the fruit of their olive trees. Two weeks ago, I was olive harvesting in a village in the firing zone in Mesafriyata and there were almost no olives on the trees. I'm no expert in olives, but I have been at my fair share of olive harvest at this point. And I was very confused. I was like, why are there like, you know, a handful of olives per tree. And the Palestinian whose land it was explained to us that they hadn't been able to water the land the entire year because it was too close to a settlement. And they were nervous to be able to go and water the land. And so the trees just don't produce olives in the same quantity because they haven't been able to care for them. I think there are still ways that the kind of ramped up violence is impacting every aspect of life, including how much money this family is going to be able to bring in selling olive oil this year because of that violence. And, you know, that day that we were at that olive harvest in this village, we actually had a very lovely day. It was a beautiful day outside. We, you know, made tea out in the field and picked olives until we finished. And the village right next to us massed others came down with batons and beat people and there was someone who was hospitalized. And you just kind of never know when that's going to strike. I also told me that people involved in solidarity presents like her were particularly shaken by the killing of ishner Aegee, a 26 year old Turkish American activist who was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in September. She was killed while participating in a protest against settlement expansion near Nablus in the West Bank. Obviously it's horrific on so many levels that this happened. But I think also is challenging in terms of the potential future it points to and what the what increased violence really could look like. Because I think, you know, I, over the years feel like I've developed a bit of a sense of knowing where to be and how to kind of best position myself to stay as safe as possible, not that anything's ever guaranteed. But I feel like I generally know how to remove myself from situations that are escalating that moment that I feel I need to do that. And, you know, the idea that she was shot by a sniper on a hilltop overlooking a protest really changes the calculus of the kinds of violence that we could be facing. I think as we were looking at a pretty grim future both in terms of Israeli and American politics now and having conversations together as Israelis Americans Palestinians together about how we're going to face that kind of increased violence and increased repression. I think is something that we're going to need to do in order to be able to keep doing this work responsibly and to, you know, be able to keep ourselves and everyone we work with as safe as possible in the context where, you know, that's impossible. I think that's like just been hard to trace what's happening is that to me, it seems obvious that like the long term impact of this is further sequestration of Palestinian villages in Palestinian social networks. But, you know, it seems like it's their politicians are really relying on the settler's older militias to like enact that agenda for them. Yeah, it's hard to trace and it's hard to report on, which I think is one of the challenges of talking about this that and I face this a lot working as a journalist that most things that happen in Mesafariata are not in and of themselves newsworthy quote unquote for the international media because the same thing happens every single day. And there's only so many times that, you know, an international publication is going to take a story about home demolitions in Mesafariata or a settler attack in Mesafariata or cutting water pipes in Mesafariata or activists being beat up in Mesafariata. And those things happen constantly, but because they happen sort of bit by bit, it's hard to get attention for them. And I do think that's part of the strategy that the settlers are really playing the long game and they have time. And, you know, if they came in with trucks and bulldozers tomorrow and loaded all the people onto trucks and bulldozers the villages in the firing zone, that would be on the front page of every single paper in the world. But they're not going to do that because they have time and they realize that they can, you know, it might take them 20, 30, 40 years, but if they can just make one more well inaccessible, one more home demolished, one more school demolished, they'll eventually achieve the same effect. It's ethnic cleansing by a thousand cuts and because they're on the winning side at the moment, there's nothing to stop them from playing the long game and they know it's strategic. As of May 2024, at least 18 Palestinian villages in the West Bank have been forcibly transferred. According to Bitcellum, from May to July of 2024, 288 people lost their homes, 112 of them minors. Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Max Friedman, and me, Alana Levinson. This episode was produced by me and edited by Emily Bell, music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions. Ali Awad, who is featured in this episode, has reported and translated for a previous episode of Unsettled. Hi, this is Unsettled producer Emily Bell. Since we started producing Unsettled seven and a half years ago, we've published almost a hundred episodes, personal stories, expert interviews, and documentaries reported from the ground. 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