XPost: uk.legal, soc.culture.jewish, alt.revisionism   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   Violent Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank   
   have skyrocketed ever since October 7. Before that, 2022 and 2023 were   
   already setting record highs in settler violence, but the nature of   
   settler attacks today is on an entirely different level. Settlers are   
   now expelling entire Palestinian communities from their villages for   
   the first time in decades.   
      
   According to the UN, Israeli settlers expelled about 1,200   
   Palestinians from some 25 rural communities across the West Bank,   
   including seven communities that have been completely depopulated.   
      
   To say that this is historically unprecedented since the 1967 war   
   would be an understatement.   
      
   In recent weeks, Israeli settlers ramped up their attacks on several   
   Palestinian villages east of Ramallah. On April 11, following the   
   disappearance of a teenage settler near the village of al-Mughayyir,   
   hundreds of settlers launched a series of pogroms against neighboring   
   Palestinian villages.   
      
   “Settlers came from the nearby settlement of Shilo up the hill and   
   began to attack livestock barracks in the plain outside the village,”   
   Abu Musa Bashir, a resident of al-Mughayyir, tells Mondoweiss. “They   
   entered the village and began to shoot at houses, killing a young man   
   who tried to defend his house with stones from his rooftop.”   
      
   “For two days, settlers wounded dozens of people, burned eight houses,   
   five livestock barracks, and many cars,” he said. “This is not the   
   first time they attacked al-Mughayyir, but in recent months, the   
   settlers’ pressure on the village has increased, leaving everyone in   
   constant terror.”   
      
   The location of the attacks wasn’t a coincidence. The Israeli teenager   
   went missing near al-Mughayyir and was later found dead in the same   
   area. But the attacks extended to the neighboring villages of Mazra’a   
   Sharqiyyah, Turmusayya, Sinjel, Libban, Duma, and Aqraba, stretching   
   from the northeast of Ramallah to the southeast of Nablus.   
      
   This line of villages, moving north to south between the two cities,   
   overlooks the Jordan Valley to the east, at the edge of the   
   semi-contiguous Palestinian demographic presence in the central West   
   Bank.   
      
   The lands of these villages extend into the eastern slopes of the   
   central West Bank — a semi-arid chain of valleys and hills that spill   
   into the Jordan Valley. Palestinian villagers used to cultivate these   
   slopes until 1967, when Israel declared most of them closed military   
   zones. They are also the most fertile areas of the entire West Bank.   
      
   Bedouin Palestinian communities have lived on these slopes for   
   generations, moving their livestock up and down the hills depending on   
   the season and using the space for herding. In doing so, they have   
   maintained a centuries-old lifestyle that is native to the region. The   
   only thing standing in the way of the annexation of these lands by   
   Israel are these Palestinian communities, which is why settlers and   
   Israeli authorities have been gradually expelling them in a piecemeal   
   fashion, as in the case of the slow ethnic cleansing of the Bedouin   
   community of Ein Samiya in May 2023.   
      
   After October 7, everything changed. Israeli settlers expelled most of   
   the Bedouin communities in the last six months. And now the geographic   
   pattern of settler violence in the West Bank becomes clearer: they are   
   pushing for the depopulation of the Palestinian villages bordering the   
   Jordan Valley.   
      
   On October 12, the largest Bedouin community on the eastern slopes of   
   the central West Bank, Wadi Siq, ceased to exist. Armed Israeli   
   settlers entered Wadi Siq at noon and told Palestinian families to   
   leave and never come back under threat of death.   
      
   Abu Bashar Ka’abneh, head of one of the families in Wadi Siq and   
   spokesperson for the community, crossed the Israeli road from the   
   valley where the community stood, and moved less than three kilometers   
   away to the west of the Israeli highway, settling with his and other   
   families on the lands of the Palestinian village of Rammun.   
      
   “We are originally from the Naqab desert, in the south of historic   
   Palestine,” Ka’abneh tells Mondoweiss. “Our parents were forced out of   
   there in the Nakba in 1948, and settled in the southern tip of the   
   south Hebron hills, known as Masafer Yatta.”   
      
   “The occupation army forced them to leave again after taking over in   
   1967, and they scattered along the Jordan Valley and the eastern   
   slopes until, in the late seventies, some 40 families gathered in Wadi   
   Siq and created the community.”   
      
   “We were always banned from building so we lived in trailer houses and   
   tents because the entire Jordan Valley and the slopes are a part of   
   area C. They just let us live there, although with a lot of   
   restrictions, until 2020,” Ka’abneh recalled. “Settlers began to   
   harass us, bulldozing land around the community with the excuse of   
   preparing for a new settlement and banning us from herding near   
   specific areas, but then they began to become violent.”   
      
   “When we were forced out, some settlers wore Israeli reserve army   
   uniforms. Others went into the houses and kicked women out, while some   
   men were arrested and beaten. Many were forced to leave without taking   
   clothes or personal belongings, and some went missing in the valley   
   before reaching the road,” Ka’abneh says, recounting the harrowing   
   events of last October. “We are now in the same area, technically just   
   across the road, but no longer in area C.”   
      
   Settler attacks on this area first began to take a deadly turn in   
   2015, when Israeli settlers torched the Dawabsheh family’s home in the   
   village of Duma, killing an entire family, including 18-month-old Ali.   
   The solve survivor of the family was 10-year-old Ahmad Dawabsheh,   
   suffering serious burns.   
      
   A year ago, in March 2023, settlers tried to do the same to a farmers’   
   family outside of the village of Sinjel, halfway between Ramallah and   
   Nablus. Settlers threw burning objects inside the house of the family   
   from a small window opening. The family, including both parents and   
   three children, escaped from a back door at the last minute, surviving   
   but losing their home.   
      
   “The first thing to note about the line of eastern villages is that it   
   forms the natural edge of the Jordan Valley,” Khalil Tafakji, a top   
   Palestinian expert on Israeli settlements and former head of the maps   
   unit at Jerusalem’s Orient House, tells Mondoweiss. “And the first   
   thing to remember about the Jordan Valley, as far as settlements are   
   concerned, is the Allon plan of 1967.”   
      
   The Allon plan, devised by Israel’s then-labor minister Yigal Allon   
   shortly after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank suggested annexing   
   large parts of the West Bank by Israel and leaving the rest to Jordan.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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