'The settlers are in control': How the West Bank is being ethnically cleansed

The 50km journey from Ramallah north to Nablus in the occupied West Bank used to take an hour. Israeli checkpoints now mean it can take half a day or more.

It’s Friday morning and I’m on a bus full of students and young families going to stay with relatives for the weekend.

We swing left to join Highway 60, which runs along the ancient route from Hebron in the south to Jenin and Nazareth to the north.

In Ottoman times it was known as the “route of the thieves”, with robbers lying in wait for unwary travellers. Today the thieves are Israeli settlers.

Were Palestine to become its own state, Highway 60 would become a key piece of national infrastructure. But now every hundred metres or less is an Israeli flag.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson died 30 years ago, but to many settlers he is a living presence. His followers believe that all the land of historical Israel belongs to the Jews.

Settlers paste his emblem - a blue crown against a yellow background above a Hebrew word meaning messiah - in Palestinian villages and at crossroads.

Groups of settlers congregate along the road. Some carry machine guns. The women wear long woven dresses.

Many settlers, especially those in remote outposts, view Palestinians with hatred and contempt. 

We pass Turmus Ayya, which is under regular attack. Rampaging settlers, many armed, destroy crops, burn cars and houses, wreck agricultural machinery.

A young mother sitting near me on the bus shivers: “It’s the one that’s killing everybody. The head of the snake.”

All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, according to a ruling by the International Court of Justice in 2024.

Many Shilo settlers are American Israelis, while many American Palestinians live in Turmus Ayya. 

Back in the United States they might be neighbours and friends. In the West Bank, the Shilo settlers are intent on driving out or killing the Palestinians and seizing their land.

We pass along the road to Beita, a village that has come under repeated murderous assault since a settlement outpost called Evyatar (translation: God is great) was launched with the support of the radical settler movement Nachala which has received funding from organisations in the US.

I have visited Beita several times. Every Friday the youth of Beita march to protect their land. They mostly throw stones and set light to tyres. But they don’t pose any realistic danger to settlers or well-armed Israeli soldiers.

Sixteen of them had been shot dead when I last visited in September 2024, with many others injured. An American-Turkish dual national, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, was one of the martyrs, targeted by an israeli soldier with a shot to the head.

The direct route to Nablus should pass through Huwwara, the scene of a notorious settler pogrom three years ago.

Today Huwwara is cut off by one of the ubiquitous barrier gates installed across the West Bank to enable the occupying Israeli authorities to block off towns and villages.

The bus driver swings left and up the hill. We are now close to Yitzhar, an especially violent settlement known for its motto “expel or kill”, which has been graffitied on homes and walls in Palestinian villages.

Under the flag the text states that it is there to remind “the residents of the Arab villages of their true destiny - to be slaves to the children of Israel”.

Two white caravans

“They will come down the hill. They will seize livestock. They will take the land. They are armed. If we resist, they will kill us. They will invade our houses.”

These tiny unregistered outposts are appearing all over the West Bank. According to the International Crisis Group, 94 were planted last year. They start as a handful of armed fanatics in mobile homes. Over time they grow, gain formal recognition, become permanent.

Israelis build their settlements on hilltops. Deeply rooted Palestinian villages favour gently sloping terrain on the lower slopes where they are closer to agricultural land and can make the best use of springs and natural breezes.

“The settlers are in control,” remarks a bus passenger. “They rule the West Bank now. The army does what they tell them.

Today settlers enjoy near total impunity from the law and can rely on military support if Palestinians resist. They descend from their hilltops and do what they want. Burn. Loot. Steal. Kill.

Palestinians are the object of a vicious programme of organised ethnic cleansing.

According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, Israel has driven out 59 Palestinian communities, home to more than 4,000 people, since 7 October 2023.

In addition, B’Tselem reports, the Israeli army has driven more than 32,000 people from their homes in refugee camps, with many houses deliberately destroyed.

According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 Palestinians, including 200 children, have been killed by Israel during this period.

Tamir Pardo, a former director of Mossad, visited the West Bank last month. Afterwards he remarked: “My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw reminded me of the events that happened against Jews in the last century.”

While the new wave of ferocious settler attacks has been fuelled in part by a thirst for vengeance after the 7 October Hamas-led attacks of 2023, the fundamental explanation lies in the political pact struck between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right religious parties in late 2022. 

In return for their support, Netanyahu appointed Smotrich as finance minister and awarded him control of the West Bank.

This was a gross breach of international law. Israel has been the occupying power in the West Bank since it seized the territory from Jordanian control during the 1967 Arab-Israel war.

Under international law any power must manage occupied territory through a military mechanism.

In order to hand over the West Bank to Smotrich, Netanyahu created a new body, the Settlement Administration.

As Peace Now, an Israeli NGO, points out, the Settlement Administration “is a body that is committed and by law to the interests of the state of Israel and its citizens”. 

Whereas the army had (in theory at least) an over-riding duty to act in the interests of Palestinians, the Settlement Administration serves only Israeli citizens. And not just any Israeli citizens: Israeli settlers. 

Smotrich, who himself lives in a settlement and has built his career standing up for violent settler interests, has used his powers to the full.

In the almost 60 years since its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel constructed approximately 150 settlements.

Earlier this year the Israeli cabinet approved the construction of 34 new settlements, bringing the total approved by the Netanyahu coalition to 103. 

Meanwhile scores of irregular “outposts” are being approved, with ruinous consequences for Palestinians.

Money and guns

The settlers require guns, homes, agricultural machinery, drones, new roads and off-road vehicles as they drive Palestinian off their land. This programme of ethnic cleansing does not come cheap.

Crucially, Smotrich is not just controller of the West Bank. As finance minister he has approved a substantial funding uplift in support of the settlers’ campaign.

While Netanyahu’s straightened coalition government is cutting national budgets, it pours money into settlements.

“This is daylight robbery of public funds to benefit a small group within the government’s base,” says Peace Now.

When Middle East Eye visited Peace Now executive director Lior Amihai in his Tel Aviv office he told us that Smotrich had allocated seven billion shekels ($2.4bn) to a five-year plan for settlement roads, many of which are built on Palestinian-owned land. 

This means that nearly a third of Israel’s intercity roads budget is being spent on just 300,000 settlers making up about three percent of the Israeli population.

Experience shows that once roads are built the settler population increases exponentially, with local Palestinians driven out.

Settlers, all of whom are living illegally in the West Bank, have ready access to weapons ranging from M16 assault rifles to pistols and drones. 

Over the last three years the West Bank has become a lawless and terrifying place where not even Israelis are safe.

Three weeks after MEE interviewed him in Tel Aviv, Peace Now’s Amihai was assaulted by settlers while leading a tour of the Jordan valley for Israeli left-wing activists.

Footage of the event shows settlers hitting him before shoving him against the side of a vehicle and asking “Why did you bring Arabs here?” 

Human rights activist Aviv Tatarsky of the peace organisation Ir Amim told MEE how settlers attacked him last month in Deir Istiya, a small village 15km south of Nablus, after he intervened when farmers were assaulted.

Tatarsky, like Amihai an Israeli citizen, told MEE that his assailants came from the ultra-orthodox Emmanuel (translation: God is with us) settlement.

Tatarsky played down the attack, stressing that Palestinians endured much worse assaults on a daily basis. Nevertheless, he was forced to take a week off work.

Even foreign media are now fair game for settlers as last July’s assault on a German TV crew and the detention of CNN journalists in March proves.

The Palestinian Authority has 70,000 soldiers at its disposal, but they never come to the aid of threatened Palestinians. Instead they are deployed to help Israel police Palestinian resistance.

One senior PA officer admits: “We are collaborators. We are under the orders of Israel. Anyone who denies this is a liar.”

As the bus approached Nablus the tension finally eased. This ancient city, built in the first century CE by the Roman emperor Vespasian, comes under settler and Israeli army assault but on nothing like the same devastating scale as other major towns like Tulkarm in the east or Jenin in the north. 

Symbol of sumud

In February, Smotrich announced a shake-up of land registration law in the West Bank which will make it easier for Israelis to claim Palestinian land.

The main effect is expected be felt in the rural areas of the West Bank because it makes it far more difficult to prove ownership of the land.

Most rural areas fall within Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank that has remained under full Israeli control since the Oslo Accords which established the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s.

Palestinians told MEE they feared the effect that the new mechanism demanding that Palestinians are compelled to prove ancient property rights could be applied to devastate cities like Nablus.

They point to the example of Hebron where settlers have seized property in the heart of the city.

Military forces were brought in to protect them and vast areas of the old city have been cleared of Palestinians.

But the spirit of resistance remains. I witnessed this defiant endurance after I left Nablus to catch a bus to visit friends in the nearby village of Burqa. 

At its centre stand elegant Ottoman-era buildings, including an old church. The view to the south towards Nablus is magical, with rolling hills and olive trees.

Established on stolen Palestinian land in 1978, the settlers were evicted in 2005 as part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan.

But they never fully left. Palestinians were not given back their stolen land and settlers maintained a presence by building a yeshiva (religious school) on the site. 

In footage that can be viewed on YouTube he recently told supporters: "The nation of Israel demands to return to occupy, to take possession and to return to our holy land… it is just about going back to a place that belongs to us."

Settlers from Homesh descend to Burqa several times a week to terrorise Palestinians. They steal cars, sheep and agricultural equipment. Two days before my visit they had swarmed through olive trees, setting them alight.

But villagers told me that the settlers were afraid to enter the village itself.

"We have placed a sign at the entrance of our village: ‘Stay away to be safe’. When they come into the village we send a message to all the men in Burqa to come out," one of them said.

He told us he was working his plot of land because “today is a Saturday, the Jewish holy day, and on other days we are afraid the settlers will come and kill us”.

Mamoun, who fought in the first Intifada, proudly told MEE: “Shimon Peres came in his car to Burqa. He said that he hadn’t been attacked by any village except Burqa.”

After coffee Mamoun took me to the memorial wall near the entrance to the village where the names of those who gave their lives for resistance are inscribed. Almost all Palestinians remember their martyrs in this way.

“This wall is like a challenge,” said Mamoun. “We are continuing our resistance to Israeli attacks.”

The first 18 martyrs on the wall died fighting the British. Ten died during the Nakba. Others during the Black September uprising of 1970, and then during the first and second intifadas.

Beside the wall of martyrs there used to stand a statue of Handala, a cartoon character who has become a symbol of steadfastness (sumud) for Palestinians.