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Israeli settlers force Palestinians from their West Bank village [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-23
On May 23 the Guardian reported how Israeli settlers recently forced about 150 Palestinians to leave their West Bank village. The Guardian wrote:
Through a five-day intimidation campaign carried out under the watch of the Israeli police and army, violent Israeli settlers have forced about 150 Palestinians to leave their village in the occupied West Bank. On Sunday morning, settlers established an illegal outpost consisting of a basic shelter and a sheep pen 100 meters from a Palestinian home in Mughayyir al-Deir, east of Ramallah. By Friday, dozens of villagers had already moved their flocks away, packed up their belongings and were dismantling the wooden and metal frames of their houses.
Settlers stood near the Palestinian men who “worked fast and largely in silence, grappling with the grim reality of leaving the place where most were born and grew up.”
A child cried as he was driven away on a truck loaded with the family’s red sofas. “We are all leaving,” said one villager, who asked not to be named. Settlers threw stones at some trucks as they left, and celebrated on social media.
The Guardian article quotes “an unofficial spokesperson for the extremist group Hilltop Youth,” who wrote:
“This is what redemption looks like! This is a relatively large outpost that contained about 150 people from the enemy population, but it was broken.”
The article points out that “the tactics used by the settlers this week were not new. The nearby hills are dotted with the ruins of abandoned villages.”
Activists said settlers had never before built an outpost so close to Palestinian homes, and the speed and intensity of the campaign in Mughayyir al-Deir was a sign of their growing confidence.
There may be legal recourse. “One Palestinian family filed a petition with Israel’s supreme court on Thursday demanding an injunction and urgent hearing into why the military, police and local authorities did not act to prevent the forced evictions and protect Palestinians.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli military said troops operated “to ensure the security of the state of Israel and Judea and Samaria [Israel’s name for the occupied West Bank]”, and the government directs how the military should enforce orders about illegal construction.
The spokesperson said the military would respond to the legal petition in court, and a hearing is scheduled for next week. The Guardian comments that by the time judges hear the case “the village will be empty.”
Previous stories we have posted at Daily Kos about settlers and violence on the West Bank:
1) May 8, 2025: Thousands of Palestinians have been displaced on the West Bank since January — details from the cities of Jenin and Tulkarm
2) March 25, 2024 The largest West Bank land grab since 1993 —
Israel has used land orders to gain control over 16 percent of Palestinian-controlled lands in the West Bank.
Palestinians “have little ability” to stop the land transfers. After the 1967 war, Israel issued a military order that stopped the process of land registration across the West Bank. Now families lack the paperwork to prove that they have private ownership over their land. And tax records, the only other evidence of West Bank property rights, are not accepted by Israeli authorities. According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, more than 40 percent of the West Bank is under the control of Israeli settlers, and more than half-a-million Jewish residents now live in the West Bank. In recent years, the Housing Ministry has offered subsidized apartments in the West Bank through a lottery system.
3) February 2, 2024: Settlers and Violence on the West Bank — there are at least 146 settlements the Israeli government has authorized in the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem, along with 144 that are not officially recognized.
4) October 10, 2023 — West Bank Violence — at least seven Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers since the war in Gaza began; more than 100 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces over the same time period, according to the United Nations. Some 500 Palestinians have been driven from their homes.
Armed settlers began roaming through the small Bedouin community of Wadi Siq nearly every day after Oct. 7, threatening Palestinians with a massacre if they refused to leave, according to Tariq Mustafa, who fled the area to a neighboring village with his family. “Get out of here; go to Jordan,” the settlers shouted in Arabic before knocking down tents. Mustafa said he called the Israeli police, but the officer hung up when he tried to report the incident.
Mustafa said about 40 people have been forced from the area, a scenic valley east of Ramallah. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to go home. “The war in Gaza gave the settlers the green light,” he said. “Before, they would yell at us to go to Ramallah. Now they are telling us to go all the way to Jordan.”
The Jewish population in the West Bank passed half a million earlier this year and settlements have continued to expand under Israel’s right-wing government.
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