Settler violence cloaked by Gaza & Iran

Taking advantage of the war in Iran, settlers in the South Hebron Hills have stepped up their violent assaults on Palestinian communities in the area. A decision by an Israeli planning committee in the West Bank could lead to the destruction of all the remaining hamlets
By Gideon Levy, pictures by Alex Levac (Haaretz, 27/06/2025)

In Masafer Yatta, in the district of dispossession and apartheid, the settlers are taking advantage of the wars and attacking Palestinians with unrestrained violence. There is no one to stop them. Rather, the Israeli authorities, for their part, are making draconian decisions that might lead to the longed-for absolute ethnic cleansing of this desert region.

A semblance of tranquility and calm hovered over this arid, mountainous terrain this past Monday, far from the Ifanian missiles. But below the surface there is anything but tranquility in this battered zone, where thuggish settlers have become the exclusive masters, more so perhaps than in any other place in the territories of the occupation.

Perhaps it’s the remoteness that allows them to vent their innate, raging violence, to truly run wild and do all the damage they want. The Israel Defense Forces will observe from the side, and in some cases even take part in the pogroms, and the police will also assume a passive bystander’s stance, never lifting a finger against the hooligans. This state of affairs has existed here for years, but during the 12 days that Israel was at war with Iran it assumed a new intensity and frequency.

While the settlers have been savaging the shepherds and abusing them unmercifully on an almost daily basis since October 2023, last week, far from the public eye, the High Planning Council for Judea and Samaria made a fateful administrative decision in the direction of effecting a population transfer.

On June 18, the head of Central Command, Maj. Gen. Avi Blut, sent the council a document – which was not released to the public – stating that the army needs Firing Zone 918 for training purposes. Accordingly, a directive was to be forwarded to all the subcommittees of the High Planning Council to reject every request for the legalization of existing structures (not owned by Jews, that is) in that area. The implication is the accelerated demolition of the Palestinian villages and expulsion of their residents.

Dror Etkes, who monitors settlement activity, explains that jurists dealing with such cases interpret the directive as another step toward the expulsion of all the Palestinians from the area. The directive was issued several weeks after the almost complete demolition of the tidy, heartwarming village of Khallet al-Daba, located in Zone 918. The new development this week prompted human rights volunteers – Israeli and international – in the area to issue a passionate appeal to activists. “We are reaching out to you with an urgent request for help, out of a sense of responsibility to our friends in Masafer Yatta, whom we have been accompanying for many years in their struggle to survive on their land. They need your help.”

B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories also held an emergency discussion on the subject and on modes of action to try to counteract the decision. On the agenda are 12 pastoralist villages with a total population of 2,800 individuals, whose future has hung in the balance for several years and has now become only even more uncertain.

In the meantime, the residents continue to be victims of the untrammeled violence of the settlers’ rampages. In the Masafer Yatta village of Susiya, adjacent to but outside of Zone 918, we meet the shepherd Imran Nawaja, bandaged, battered and bruised, 12 stitches in his head. Like all the inhabitants of the hamlet, he was born in the caves amid the antiquities of Susiya.

On September 2, 1986, an expropriation order led to the expulsion of the residents of Susiya from their historic homes and lands, on the basis of “public need.” The villagers erected their tents and huts on the other side of the road that led to their homes. And then – guess what – settlers invaded the abandoned site, and even though a number of evacuation orders have been issued against them over the years, no one has bothered to enforce them.

The settlers remain there, alive and kicking, a violent, illegal outpost, close to the mother settlement of Susya. The residents of Palestinian Susiya built themselves a hamlet whose homes are threatened by innumerable demolition orders. The tiny habitation is invaded almost daily by settlers who come to harass, provoke and assault. The shepherd Nawaja is a case in point.

Settlers attack residents in Masafer Yatta, this month.
His name is Imran, and his nickname Yusuf, because, as he related this week, his father wanted to name him Imran, his mother preferred Yusuf. The paternal name stuck to his ID card, the maternal name to him: Everyone calls him Yusuf.

He’s 49, married to two women – Iman, 48, and Rabiha, 46 – and has five children by the former and seven by the latter. He also has a flock of 50 sheep. His Hebrew is quite good. He’s the owner of nine dunams (2.25 acres) of land whose records date back as far back as the Turkish Land Registry, and he leases other plots for farming from their Palestinian owners. Over the years he has grown olives, wheat and barley, and pastured his flock in these areas.

His olive grove and small field stretch into a spectacular valley of olive trees below his home, for a distance of hundreds of meters. But it all remains only a spectacle, because Nawaja is prohibited from approaching his field and his grove. Every time he tries to do so, settlers appear and chase him off by force, with stones, or they summon the army, which does the job for them: Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, the army too has denied him access to his land. There’s no pasturing, no olive growing, no fields of wheat and barley. All he can do is gaze at them from afar.

Nawaja show us a video on his phone from the first weeks of the Gaza war, in which an officer from the Civil Administration – the Israeli governing body in the West Bank – explains his rights. “This is your land,” she says. “You are not allowed to build here, but you are allowed to work your land.”

“Am I allowed to put my sheep here?” he asks the officer, and she replies: “You are allowed – and it’s forbidden to Israelis. In the event that Israelis enter, you call the Civil Administration and the police.”

He shows us an older order, dated October 3, 2011. “Proclamation regarding closure of territory, prohibition of Israelis from entering and being present on Nawaja’s lands. No Israeli shall enter the closed area or be present on it. An Israeli who is found to be in the closed area will be obligated to leave immediately. Should he violate the orders, any soldier or police officer shall be authorized to act to remove him to outside the closed area and may exercise reasonable force to that end.” Signed by the military commander, curlicued signature, the name not legible.

Settlers have raided his land dozens of times since the start of the war. They pasture their cattle in his field, they come to provoke him and display lordship, and on occasion they try to steal his animals. Almost always he summons the police. When they show up, the vandals flee, and that’s the extent of the law enforcement in this lawless territory.

Nawaja documents everything, films the events, numbers each incident, transmits the evidence to his lawyer, fills up file folders, submits complaints. Nothing helps, no one provides him with protection.

On Monday this week, shortly before we arrived, he and his wife Rabiha set out for the medical clinic in the city of Yatta, near Hebron. A settler youth appeared immediately and blocked their way by force. “No passage for Arabs. This is our place, the Jews,” the hooligan said. Nawaja summoned the police. The regular officer, a Circassian, came and explained to him that it was forbidden for them to walk on their land, they could only travel by car. Yusuf tried to explain to the officer that his family doesn’t have a car; the policeman suggested that he submit a complaint.

“Why is the settler allowed to walk here and I am not?” The police officer was silent. Shamed and humiliated, Rabiha returned to her home, as the encroachers celebrated another small victory over the indigenous people.

The preceding Tuesday, June 17, in the late afternoon, Nawaja set out from his home with his two wives and three of his children – Dalal, a girl of 14; and two sons, Musab, 16, and Umar, 12 – headed for his sheep pen, which is about 20 meters away. Suddenly he noticed 10 masked settlers heading down the hill toward them from the south, with another five coming their way from the east.

The family was on the way to protect the sheep, after hearing that settlers had stolen some from another pen. The animals here are confined to the pen, because it’s not possible to take them to pasture. This has led the cost of feeding to soar.

From a distance the settlers began throwing stones at them to get them to leave, the way one might chase off a pack of stray dogs. The family was helpless. Then a fancy UTV, probably one of the Polaris Rangers that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave the settlers, hurtled toward them wildly, carrying a few more people. Nawaja knows some of them, the regular thugs – he rattles off their names.

The Ranger sped toward his wife, threatening to run her over. Nawaja poised himself to stop the vehicle with his body and with shouts. The Ranger pulled up, the driver and the occupants got out, armed with clubs. They attacked Nawaja, beating him mercilessly. They hit him on the head and he fell to the ground, face down. The clubs continued to pummel him even when he lay wounded. He managed to get up, stumbled a few steps and then fell again and lost consciousness.

Bloodstains, now blackened, are still splattered on the rocks where all this happened. Dalal, his daughter, filmed the event, her hand visibly trembling as she held the phone. In the video Nawaja is seen sprawled on the ground, unconscious, bleeding from the head, his shirt saturated with blood. The bruises from the beating on his stomach and back were still vividly visible this week.

“I didn’t know what was happening to me,” he told us. “Another blow to the stomach and then a blow to the back.” [Below is the picture after Nawaja was released from hospital. Imran Nawaja, his head bandaged from the attack, this week. He documents everything, films the events, transmits the evidence to his lawyer. Nothing helps, no one protects him]

His wife and a neighbor summoned a Palestinian ambulance and the Israel Police. Both arrived on the scene quickly. When the police appeared, the settlers fled, as usual. The police officers recommended that he file a complaint, and also left. Still dazed, Nawaja was taken to the hospital in Yatta, where his head wound was closed up with 12 stitches. He was kept overnight for observation, before being discharged the next day, stiff all over and subject to dizzy spells when he stood up.

He had told the police that he would file a complaint only after his condition improved. On Sunday this week he duly went to Netiv Ha’avot Street in Hebron, to the Kiryat Arba police station, where he submitted a complaint for “aggravated assault and criminal trespassing.”

An Israel Police spokesperson this week stated, in response to a query from Haaretz: “We view with gravity violence of any sort. Immediately upon receiving a report about the incident, police officers arrived on the scene. An investigation initiated by the Hebron station was launched, within the framework of which the victim was invited to give evidence. The investigation is continuing with the aim of finding those involved and bringing them to justice.”

After taking our leave and starting on our way, we suddenly saw opposite us a herd of brown cows and two settlers wearing large kippot and adorned with long sidelocks. One rode a white donkey, the other walked, as they pastured their animals in the fields opposite.

Those are not their fields.