WHEN I met a fellow Irishwoman in Palestine, I asked her what she says when people ask her if it is a dangerous place.
“I say that there is one big danger,” she told me. “When you come here, you will leave a bit of your heart behind, and forever you will want to come back.”
I had travelled to Palestine in response to an invitation via Palestine solidarity networks for internationals to observe the human rights situation in the West Bank.
A few weeks ago, I arrived in Jerusalem. The streets of the Old City, normally abuzz in the days leading up to Lent, were eerily quiet. Many businesses’ shutters were locked, and the few that remained open were deserted. One owner told me I was his first customer in months. The war on Gaza felt both distant and unignorable, its impact written all over the neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem.
The world has witnessed unspeakable horror visited upon Gazans by the Israeli forces, but ethnic cleansing is taking place in the West Bank, too.
Illegal Israeli settlements carve away at Palestinian land and life on a daily basis. Thus far, Europe’s governments have sat on their hands, save for sanctioning a few particularly violent settlers. The Israeli state that empowers, protects, and funds these settlers has faced no consequences.
Most of my time in the region was spent in Masafer Yatta, a gathering of 19 villages and around 3,000 residents in the South Hebron Hills. It is in what Israel has called ‘Area C’ of the West Bank, under Israeli military law. It is the Israeli army who decides how Palestinians live here.
At-Tuwani village is at the heart of Masafer Yatta. It consists of a few steep, narrow roads lined with houses. At first glance it seemed safe and peaceful: colourful murals burst from the walls of buildings, chicken and geese wander the streets, cats and dogs have the occasional spat, the sounds of children’s play can be heard from anywhere in the village.
It took some time for me to comprehend the settlers’ presence around At-Tuwani. The main illegal settlement, Ma’on, sits on a hill overlooking the village, where armed security patrols its perimeters and boldly beyond them. But the horizon is punctuated by smaller structures: outposts, watchtowers, building materials and all-terrain vehicles.
At all times of day, it is impossible to know when, from where, and by how many settlers or soldiers, you are being watched.
Hafaz Huraini, a resident of At-Tuwani, explained to me how settler violence has escalated since the events of October 7. The distinction between army and settler is meaningless now, he says. They are one body.
“They are using the war to make new ‘facts on the ground’,” Hafaz explained.
I asked about an Israeli flag lashed to the top of a huge olive tree at the end of Hafaz’s garden. It had been erected on October 12, 2023. Within days, a military sentry-post was built there, their greenhouse destroyed and crops bulldozed. On October 13, a settler from Ma’on entered the village and shot an unarmed Palestinian man at point-blank range in the middle of the street.
The settler returned to Ma’on, escorted by an Israeli soldier. The Palestinian man survived but was seriously injured.
Of course, settler violence pre-dates October 7. In September, 2022, Hafaz was working on his land when five masked, armed settlers trespassed onto his land and attacked him. He tried to defend himself with farming tools, but both his arms were broken. The Israeli police detained Hafaz at the hospital before he was fully treated, charged him with attempted murder, and removed him to prison where he was refused further medical treatment, even painkillers.
Luckily, the entire incident was filmed by a visitor. The video recording proved Hafaz’s innocence, but to leave prison he was forced to pay a hefty fine, and accept a military order barring him from setting foot on his own land for a month.
When I asked him what charges the settlers faced, he told me: “Nothing.”
The Hurainis are but one of many Palestinians families facing settler violence and resisting displacement. For them, despair is not an option. Hafaz’s son Sami Huraini is a member of Youth of Sumud, a grassroots group that works with the most at-risk families to re-build homes after demolition, accompany children to school, and document human rights abuses. They resist through continuing to live on this land and protecting each other.
Before I left At-Tuwani, I walked up to the top of the garden to take photos of the bulldozed, uncultivated fields and the line of Israeli flags.
I thought about the insult of being denied access to one’s own land, of being punished as the aggressor when defending your life.
I wondered if, when, and how the settlers would try to steal this land, bulldoze the Hurainis’ house, or their neighbours’, turn those beautiful murals to rubble. Would the next flag be raised over his home? How could this family resist?
The warm welcome I received in Palestine was humbling. On my first night in Ramallah, a trio of teenage boys stopped me and my friend on the street. “Where are you from?” they asked. “Ireland,” I replied. “Irlanda, Irlanda, we love you,” they said, and each shook my hand enthusiastically. “When you go back, tell them Mohammed, Mahmoud, and Ahmed loves them.”
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