Hardliners violently expel Palestinians to expand Israeli settlements in West Bank

While Gaza endures a devastating war, an increasingly brutal battle is being fought over land in another Palestinian territory: the West Bank. Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians there more frequently and ferociously than ever before and forcing them to flee their homes. Special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen reports.
William Brangham:
While Gaza is enduring its devastating war, an increasingly brutal battle is being fought over land in another Palestinian territory, the West Bank.
There, Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinian communities more frequently and ferociously than ever before. Because of those attacks, more than 100 Palestinians have fled their homes in the Northern West Bank in just the past 10 days. Last year, more than 1,500 were forced off their land.
Special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen traveled through the occupied West Bank to meet the Israeli settlers who are determined to expand their outposts throughout that contested territory.
Leila Molana-Allen:
As war rages on, long before the dust has settled on thousands of destroyed homes in Gaza, these Israelis are calling to be allowed to build Jewish homes amidst the rubble.
No Israelis have been allowed to live in Gaza since the government pulled out nearly 20 years ago. There was violent protest at the time. Those who called it a mistake now feel vindicated by the October 7 Hamas attacks. And as the world watches the war in Gaza, extremist settlers have taken advantage of the distraction.
Armed mobs have descended on ancient olive groves on multiple occasions, burning them to the ground, accelerating their harassment of Palestinian villagers and violent land seizures, shooting Palestinians who stand in their way. Last week, a Palestinian man was shot dead after a group of armed settlers stormed the village of Jit, setting homes aflame.
In late October, three of Yasser Audi’s family members were killed when a group of young settlers stormed through their village of Qusra on a shooting rampage. The next day, as they drove to the graveyard to bury them, their car was surrounded by armed settlers.
Fifteen-year-old Yasser’s father and brother were executed in front of him.
Yasser Audi, West Bank Resident (through interpreter):
When we leave the house, we do not know whether we will come back home or not. When we go anywhere, we find settlers and soldiers in front of us. They may attack us or kill us. They don’t care.
Leila Molana-Allen:
Suddenly the man of the house, Yasser doesn’t know how to protect his little sisters and brothers from the surging violence.
Yasser Audi (through interpreter):
I fear for my family. Every day, people are being killed. I am afraid of the future. They may kill me at any moment.
Leila Molana-Allen:
Israel’s right-wing coalition, led by pro-settlement hard-liners, has ignored Western entreaties to intervene.
Last month, the Israeli government announced it would officially recognize five more illegal settlements in the West Bank, and says it plans to allow settlers to expand into a record amount of further West Bank land this year.
Adding fuel to the fire, many reservists called up to fight from settler communities have joined IDF units in the West Bank. Human rights groups have documented multiple cases of uniformed soldiers seen providing military protection to the settler attacks.
The IDF says it is investigating the accusations. Critics say the IDF’s past form shows it cannot be trusted to investigate itself. Of more than 1,200 complaints of Israeli soldier violence against Palestinians from 2017-2020, fewer than 1 percent were charged.
Eiyar Segal lives in one of those communities, Giv’at Arnon, built strategically directly above a Palestinian village, as most settlements are. Several months ago, two settlers were shot and injured on the main road here. More than half the residents here are fighting in the reserves.
Eiyar wants immediate resettlement of Gaza, and says Palestinians should not be allowed to live there.
Eiyar Segal, West Bank Resident (through interpreter):
People from Gaza don’t care about building their lives. Instead, they are only focused on trying to destroy our lives. This went on for a long time without any military or intelligence capability to combat them effectively.
Leila Molana-Allen:
Eiyar insists the violence is caused by Palestinians refusing to accept what she sees as her biblical right to live on this disputed land, which they call Judea and Samaria, and that the only solution is for as many Israelis as possible to move here.
Eiyar Segal (through interpreter):
We do not apologize for defending ourselves. The army cannot maintain a prolonged presence without Jews living here.
Leila Molana-Allen:
These settlers are breaking international law, which prohibits Israelis from building in the West Bank or parts of East Jerusalem.
More than three million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank. The 1993 Oslo Accords ruled 60 percent of disputed West Bank land off-limits to settlers, in hopes that it would one day form the bulk of a Palestinian state.
But in the decades since, Oslo collapsed into memory, and settlers have slowly and increasingly publicly expanded their outposts, despite international outcry. Some 700,000 Israelis now live on this land.
A frustrated President Biden has slapped sanctions on several known violent settlers and organizations that fund and support them. He even threatened to sanction some IDF units that have been repeatedly accused of abuses of power and violence against Palestinians if they did not reform.
There have also been Palestinian attacks on settler communities, but they are far less frequent. In April, 14-year-old settler Benjamin Achimeir disappeared and was found murdered. A Palestinian man from the nearby village of Mughayyir was charged.
In the following days Israeli settlers rampaged through surrounding villages, burning homes and shooting at least four Palestinians dead. According to the U.N., five settlers have been killed since October 7, at least 11 Palestinians have been killed, and 230 injured by settlers in that time, with more than 1,250 settler attacks recorded on Palestinian villages in the course of the war.
In that same period, nearly 600 Palestinians, including 137 children, have been killed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli security forces. Hebron is the site of the ancient Tomb of Abraham, so it’s equally holy for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Some of the most hard-line settlers live in this area, alongside Palestinian communities, making it a constant flash point for violence.
In the settlement of Ma’ale Hever, high in the Hebron hills, settler activist Binyamin Shinberg has long used his expansion on political and religious grounds.
Binyamin Shinberg, Settler Activist (through interpreter):
So we have here a weapon room and — within our community, and, usually, it’s full with weapons, because they are reserved for emergency, which has come now. So all the weapons inside are now distributed.
Leila Molana-Allen:
For him, October 7 made this an existential battle.
Binyamin Shinberg:
I look at them as a national energy. I believe there are good people there, although, currently, the trust was shattered.
Leila Molana-Allen:
Like many who opposed Israel pulling out of Gaza, he believes the Hamas terror attacks were a direct result of that decision.
Binyamin Shinberg:
As we said, we cannot leave that, because it’s the Jewish country and the holy land. And also we said it will be dangerous. There will be rockets. There will be terror attacks. And they didn’t listen. But I think we do have to learn from our mistakes.
Leila Molana-Allen:
Many people say that, if Palestinians had their own state, that would stop the violence because they would then have their own land.
Binyamin Shinberg:
The reason that the Palestinians fight us is not because they don’t have a state. They will not rest until they destroy the Jewish state. So it’s either us or them.
Leila Molana-Allen:
But some believe there’s another way. Shaul Yudelman is an avowed expansionist. From a secular family in San Francisco, he moved to Israel after graduating college, learned Hebrew and moved into a settlement in the West Bank.
Shaul and his wife believe it’s essential for Jews to live in every part of the land they see as wider Israel. But they also believe they can share it.
Shaul Yudelman, West Bank Resident:
I often say that there’s really just two opinions on this conflict, right? Either there is a peace process or there’s an existential struggle for survival.
You see, there’s two totally different visions of what life could be here going at the same time.
Leila Molana-Allen:
When you see young extremist settlers picking up guns going and shooting Palestinians, terrifying children, pushing hundreds of them out of the villages that they live in and may never be able to go back to, how do you feel when you see that?
Shaul Yudelman:
It’s horrific. It’s a shame. And at the end of the day, what’s going on in this conflict, when diplomacy and peace and all those things fail, it’s a fight over the land. And that’s what people are doing. I think it’s a failure to make another political path.
Leila Molana-Allen:
For years, Shaul has worked to build bridges with Palestinian neighbors in the area. As tensions spiral out of control, he’s now using those connections to try to restore trust.
Shaul Yudelman:
I have a WhatsApp group with Palestinians from the South Hebron hills a few Israeli activists there.
Leila Molana-Allen:
Using sympathetic contacts within the IDF and local authorities, Shaul and his allies have been arranging to help local Palestinian farmers harvest their olives and graze their livestock without harassment.
He knows Israeli-Palestinian relations couldn’t be worse right now, but keeping the channels open gives him hope for a better future.
Shaul Yudelman:
We’re in a time right now we’re at home watching the news, seeing all the horror that the other side is doing. To get a phone call from someone on the other side just saying, how are you doing, is everything OK, what can I do, is very powerful, very real.
We’re not there yet, but that’s going to be the work when this — when the fighting stops.
Leila Molana-Allen:
In this shattered region, it’s devastated communities torn further apart each day. Few now dare to cling to such hope for the future.
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Leila Molana-Allen in Tekoa settlement, the West Bank.