Attacks on Palestinian homes and farms in the West Bank have continued to multiply since the formation of Israel’s new ultra-nationalist government, the most right-wing in Israeli history, following elections in November 2022. Israeli settlers have been documented using a new strategy to seize land: accusing Palestinian farmers of stealing cattle. We spoke to several Israeli NGOs who have condemned the tactic.
Videos circulating on social media document a new normal in the West Bank: armed settlers, sometimes accompanied by Israeli soldiers, breaking into Palestinians' homes to accuse their residents of stealing livestock.
On July 24, a Palestinian man filmed what happened as he tried to defend his family from the settlers who broke into his home. The video, released days later, shows the incident, which took place in Tuba, a small village several kilometres south of Hebron.
Other videos, shared on August 1 with the FRANCE 24 Observers team, document a similar incident in the Mu’arrajat area of the West Bank. The video shows a settler breaking into a Palestinian farmhouse.
Armed with a semiautomatic rifle and accompanied by at least three soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the man accuses the owners of the farm, without proof, of stealing his sheep.
‘It's done for a very specific purpose. And that purpose is to take over the land’
Ori Givati, head of advocacy at Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence – made up of IDF veterans – says these settlers have only one goal:
Settlers intentionally graze their herds in the Palestinian towns and then they claim that the Palestinian shepherds stole one of their sheep because they mixed all the sheep together. There is always an excuse. But eventually it's done for a very specific purpose. And that purpose is to take over the land.
We have this new government, the new Israeli government, the most far-right, ultra-nationalist, racist, Jewish supremacist government in Israel's history that basically, many of the people holding positions of power in this government were settlers themselves
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six Day War and, excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements considered illegal under international law.
Settlers, drawing inspiration from the ideology of religious Zionism, oppose any relinquishment of the Palestinian territories and consider the West Bank an inseparable part of Israel.
These rural attacks have taken place against a backdrop of vigilante attacks by religious nationalist settlers in several Palestinian towns.
In July 2023, the towns of Huwara, Turmus Aya and Umm Safa were all targeted by armed settlers who attacked residents. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), two Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and 71 injured since the beginning of the year.
Breaking the Silence said that the attacks on Palestinian farmers are aggravated by the ultra-right-wing shift in Israeli society and the complete impunity enjoyed by settlers.
But Kareem Jubran from the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B'Tselem, says that attributing the violence against Palestinian farmers solely to the current government would be an oversimplification.
It's true that the violence has increased as of late, but this violence has been perpetuated for many years by various Israeli governments that have turned a blind eye to settler violence.
Many cases in which Palestinian citizens have lodged complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Even if an investigation into an incident is opened, it is quickly closed without any action taken
More than 300,000 Palestinians live in shepherding communities in the Jordan Valley, according to B'Tselem, and risk being attacked by settlers.
