‘A new Nakba’: settler violence forces Palestinians out of West Bank villages

Communities who have clung on for decades are leaving their homes in the face of rising attrition by settlers.

After weeks of intense settler violence in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on  October 7, the 150 residents of Palestinian village Zanuta have made a collective decision to leave. Armed settlers – some in reservist army uniforms, some covering their faces – have begun breaking into their homes at night, beating up adults, destroying and stealing belongings, and terrifying the children.

After decades of a desperate fight to cling on to their land, the community has decided they have lost.

On Monday, men and women cried as they dismantled their homes and haphazardly packed solar panels, animal feed and personal belongings on to pickup trucks. The noise of the demolition drowned out the bleating from the animal pens and threw up dust and debris that tore at the eyes and throat.

“It is a new Nakba,” said Issa Ahmad Baghdad, 71, referring to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 after the creation of Israel. “My family are going to Rafat. But we don’t know anyone there. We don’t know what to tell the children.”

In the Gaza Strip, where Israel has launched a campaign to destroy Hamas, the militant group that killed 1,400 people on its rampage through southern Israel, trapped civilians cannot leave; in the West Bank, they are being forced from their homes.

Masafer Yatta, a collection of shepherding hamlets including Zanuta, is in area C, the sparsely populated 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control and under threat of annexation. Palestinian water cisterns, solar panels, roads and buildings here are frequently demolished on the grounds that they do not have building permits, which are nearly impossible to obtain, while surrounding illegal Israeli settlements flourish.

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‘A new Nakba’: settler violence forces Palestinians out of West Bank villages (Guardian)
Communities who have clung on for decades are leaving their homes in the face of rising attrition by Israelis