In the weeks since Oct. 7, Issa Amro has watched as Israeli settlers have entered his community, shot at nearby families and damaged property. He’s erected a fence and barricaded his windows with bricks after men in military uniform broke into his home earlier this month.
“I’m living in a cage now from all directions,” said Amro, a Palestinian activist who advocates the use of nonviolent resistance living in Hebron, a city located in occupied territory of the West Bank. “It’s intimidation day and night.”
The events of Oct. 7, which saw more than 2,000 heavily armed fighters belonging to the Islamic militant group Hamas storm into southern Israel from Gaza and kill 1,200 people, has aggravated a long-standing conflict over the West Bank. Jews living in the swathe of land between Israel and the Jordan River that forms the other Palestinian territory fear that something similar could happen there, and extremists among them have lashed out.
Settlers — who have received hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding toward infrastructure and weapons in recent years — have carried out more than 220 assaults on Palestinian communities since Oct. 7, according to Yesh Din and B’Tselem, two human rights groups documenting attacks in the West Bank. They say that’s included shooting live ammunition, setting homes and olive trees on fire and destroying water pipelines.
For decades, there have been clashes in the West Bank between Israelis — the military and settlers — and Palestinians, but last month’s attacks have exacerbated tensions, sparking fears that a second front in Israel’s war against Hamas could open up. While the violence is caused by a minority, President Joe Biden has threatened sanctions against those extremists should it continue.
Israeli forces in the West Bank have killed in excess of 200 people in that time, more than a quarter of whom were children, according to the United Nations. Seventy of the dead were living in refugee camps with most killings occurring during Israeli search-and-arrest operations or in the context of demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza, the UN says.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said that it had recorded 770 “terrorism events” carried out by Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, including shootings and hurling stones and Molotov cocktails. Four Israelis have been killed in the West Bank.
The army confirmed that it had killed 216 Palestinians and documented 126 attacks by Jewish settlers. Counterterrorism operations are conducted nightly to apprehend suspects, many of whom are part of the Hamas terrorist organization, according to the IDF spokesperson. Its mission is to maintain the security of all residents of thearea, and to act to prevent terrorism and activities that endanger the citizensof the State of Israel, they said.
Nearly 3,000 Palestinians, including at least 355 children, have been injured in demonstrations, the UN says. Making the situation more volatile is the presence of reservists from settler communities who have replaced troops departing to secure Israel’s border with Lebanon.
In many areas of the West Bank — referred to by the Israeli authorities by its biblical names Judea and Samaria — shops are shut, streets are deserted and communities cut off, closing down businesses and starving parts of the region of economic activity. Very few of the 200,000 Palestinians who used to work in Israel prior to Oct 7. are able to move freely.
Whereas Gaza is ruled by Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the US and the European Union, parts of the West Bank are run by the Palestinian Authority, which receives direct funding from the EU. Israel estimates that 465,400 Jewish settlers lived in the West Bank as of 2021, excluding Jerusalem, while Palestinian officials put the figure at 751,000 including neighborhoods in the suburbs of the contested capital.
At the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which sits on the site where Christians believe Jesus was born, throngs of tourists usually line the streets at this time of the year. Today, the roads leading into the ancient town are blocked by Israeli police officers.
“It’s the most limited amount of freedom of movement that Palestinians in the West Bank have had since the Second Intifada,” said Yahav Erez, international advocacy coordinator for Israeli rights group Yesh Din, referring to a yearslong Palestinian uprising that occurred after the failure of peace talks in 2000 and then security forces entered the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, triggering demonstrations that escalated.
Erez said her organization had documented a systematic campaign — organized through Telegram channels — by Jewish settlers to target Palestinian communities harvesting their olive trees.
One Telegram message seen by Bloomberg News accuses Palestinian olive harvesters of “planning the next massacre” on behalf of Hamas and uses a map to pinpoint their exact location.
“This is a very strategic method,” Erez said. “And it’s very efficient, because you don’t need many Israeli settlers to actually carry it out.” The fear is that such repression could spark a reaction from armed Palestinian militias.
The West Bank is split into three areas, A, B and C — the first two give Palestinian authorities some control while the third, which makes up roughly 60% of the land, is controlled by Israel.
Today, anything between 15-25% of the population are Jewish settlers living on land once envisioned by the signatories of the Oslo accords — a deal signed in 1993 — to provide Palestinians with limited self rule.Splits have meanwhile started to emerge inside the Palestinian Authority, which retains control of Area A but is deeply unpopular. Its 88-year-old leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who also chairs the Fatah political party, hasn’t held presidential elections since 2005 and is widely considered out of touch.
Abbas has come under increased public pressure to be tougher on Israel and local media have reported that he has lost control of his militiamen. Two diplomats following the situation closely confirmed that the Palestinian Authority was struggling to keep a firm grip on its armed units as tensions rise.
Jamal Masharka, a member of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, was wounded in clashes with Israeli troops in the Jenin refugee camp this month and later died of his injuries. Israel has also arrested Atta Abu-Ramila, Fatah’s secretary general in Jenin, as well as other Fatah officials based in Jerusalem and Ramallah.
Oded Revivi, the mayor of Efrat, a Jewish settlement close to Bethlehem, is known as a moderate among the settler communities. But his position has hardened in recent weeks.
“I think the international community fails to understand the severity of the attack of Oct. 7,” he said. “Anybody who lives here understands that after Oct. 7 we’ve gone back not just by a few years, but maybe even by a few decades with any possibility of a two-state solution,” whereby Israel and a future Palestinian state would live side-by-side.
Asked about attacks by settlers on Palestinian communities, he added that “the whole story has been blown a bit out of proportion.”
“They’re done by a small group of extremists, who as far as I’m concerned, need to be dealt with by the legal methods that we have with the police and with the courts,” Revivi said.
In reality, Israeli authorities are failing to arrest settlers suspected of attacking Palestinian communities.
Yonatan Mizrahi, who heads the settlement watch team at Peace Now, a group that strives to convince Israelis to embrace a two-state solution, said there was little appetite by either side in the West Bank for peace at the moment.
“At this stage, both sides believe in fighting and protecting itself,” he said. “There is a lot of fear and hate. Only international political pressure can change that.”
Back in Hebron, Amro sees no peace until the Palestinians are granted a state and the occupation ends.
“What happened on Oct. 7 will happen again if you don’t make peace,” he said. “The security solution failed. Only the peace solution will win.”
--With assistance from Michael Ovaska, Jeremy Cf Lin, Jane Pong, Mathieu Benhamou, Kyle Kim, Adrian Leung, Sam Dodge and Rachael Dottle.