Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
07-03-2026
OCCUPIED WEST BANK/ DUMA: Since Israel and the United States began their war on Iran last week, retaliatory missiles fired at Israeli targets have been flying through the skies over the occupied West Bank but it has been Israeli settlers on the ground who have been terrorizing Palestinians in their small hamlets across rural areas of the West Bank more than the Iranian missiles or the Israeli interceptors trying to shoot them down.
Thus, when debris from one missile crashed about 20 metres (22 yards) from the century-old Mosallam family home in the northern West Bank village of Duma earlier this week, Thabet remained unfazed by the threat.
“We have the rockets in the sky, but the (Israeli) settlers are at our door,” the 24-year-old said. “Of course, the settlers and the army, they are the ones who pose a danger to us. They are what we are afraid of right now.”
‘The army closes the gate, and the settler comes and stands there’
While Israeli settlements, built on lands occupied in the 1967 war in violation of international law, are equipped with sirens and bomb shelters, adjacent Palestinian communities in the West Bank are afforded no such protections. Under international law, Israel, as the occupying power, is obligated to provide for the protection of the population under its occupation.
Instead, since the war against Iran broke out on Saturday, Palestinians in the rural West Bank find themselves penned in as settlers roam free. Israeli authorities have distributed leaflets to rural communities banning movement between West Bank governorates, proclaiming “terrorism and terrorists bring only death, destruction and devastation.”
Following similar lockdowns after the previous war on Iran in June and the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, Israeli authorities have closed existing gates at village entrances and this time have installed new ones to cut off movement between villages.
Meanwhile, Israeli settler chat groups have stepped up incitement towards loftier aims in recent days. “Don’t miss the opportunity,” encouraged one such post. “It’s time to beat the enemy and expel him from the country.”
Among a myriad of Israeli settler attacks in recent days, two Palestinian brothers were killed on Monday by a gang of settlers in Qaryut, 4km (2.5 miles) west of Duma, where they were videotaped shooting live fire at Palestinian homes.
Several Bedouin communities, including those violently displaced from Khirbet Ein ar-Rashash after the October 2023 attacks, live near the Mosallam family in what they described as a spiraling crisis.
“No one is allowed to go in or out, and the people here are without food or drink,” said Muhammad, a 35-year-old man who declined to give his family name for fear of retaliation by Israeli authorities or settlers. “From the day the war (on Iran) started, no one can go to the doctor, no one can go to the hospital, no one can get bread; no one can eat.”
Similar shortages are crippling communities across the West Bank with movement so restricted that even humanitarian groups are unable to reach them. “The army closes the gate, and the settler comes and stands there,” Muhammad, who is also a neighbor of the Mosallam’s, explained.
These settlers threaten people “with weapons, with intimidation, with beatings and sticks”.
“Every day, they beat young children, they scare people, they terrorize them,” the 35-year-old man said. “‘Forbidden! Go home! Forbidden to leave your house! Forbidden! Forbidden! Forbidden!’ Everything is forbidden.” (Int’l News Desk)
