al Jazeera:
The many ways Israeli settlers steal Palestinian homes
Palestinian farmers speak with Israeli soldiers after being attacked by Israeli settlers while farming their land in Salem village east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on November 28, 2024 [Zain Jaafar/AFP]By Mat Nashed
Published On 28 Mar 202528 Mar 2025
On Monday, Ghassan Abdel Basset and his family left their home in the occupied West Bank to visit a relative.
They were going to break their fast together during the holy month of Ramadan.
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Later that evening, their neighbours informed them that Israeli settlers had invaded their home.
Ghassan hurried back to confront the settlers, but the Israeli army intervened to block him and his family from getting back to their house.
The settlers claimed they bought the home, but the Abdel Basset family never put it up for sale.
“The settlers claim they bought the house from someone, but nobody gave this person the legal right to sell our house,” Ghassan told Al Jazeera.
“God willing, we will follow the legal procedures [in Israel], and the law will take its course,” he added.
An armed Israeli settler talks to another settler and two members of the Palestinian Abdel Basset family, whose home in Hebron city near the Israeli settlement area of Tel Rumeida was taken over by Israeli settlers on March 24, 2025 [Hazem Bader/AFP]
Accelerated expulsion
Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory is illegal under international law. As an occupier, Israel is not allowed to transfer its citizens into occupied territory or enforce its national laws there.
However, more than 750,000 Israeli settlers live in illegal settlements in the West Bank, and many have forged property deeds to provide a veneer of legality to confiscate Palestinian homes.
This is one of several strategies that state-backed settlers use to uproot Palestinians, according to analysts, Palestinians and local rights groups.
Settlers – backed by the Israeli state – also vandalise homes, set up outposts, attack farmers, destroy crops and steal livestock under the supervision of the Israeli army.
According to a recent report by Peace Now and Kerem Navot, two Israeli human rights groups, Israeli settlers currently control 14 percent of Palestinian land in the West Bank.
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About half of this land has been confiscated since Israel’s most recent government came to power in December 2022, marking a serious escalation.
Since Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, its far-right government has stepped up land annexations and evictions in the West Bank, rights groups, local monitors and analysts told Al Jazeera.
“There are a lot of tools settlers use to cause the displacement of Palestinians,” said Diana Mardi, a researcher with Bimkom, an Israeli human rights group.
“They tend to use violence to get Palestinians to reach a point where they feel they have to leave their homes,” she told Al Jazeera.
Bedouins and farmers at risk
Farmers and Bedouin communities are most at risk from attacks and evictions by Israeli settlers.
The report by Peace Now and Kerem Navot found that at least 60 percent of Palestinian herder communities have been uprooted from their lands since 2022.
On top of that, 14 illegal outposts have been erected on land that Palestinian farmers, herders and Bedouins used to live on.
The report added that settlers tend to use animal herding to encroach on Palestinian land and intimidate farmers, a technique known as grazing.
A Palestinian stands beside a torched car in the aftermath of an attack by suspected Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Jinsafut on January 21, 2025 [Majdi Mohammed/AP]
Leith, a Palestinian farmer who did not disclose his last name for fear of reprisals, said settlers often try to take over farmland in his village east of Ramallah in this way.
He added that the settlers often vandalise crops and block Palestinians from tending to their land in his village.
After facing constant threats and attacks by settlers, who are often protected by the Israeli army, Palestinians often abandon their livelihoods.
“To protect their families, they have to leave the area. Many of them have children that they need to keep safe, but they lose their main source of income [from farming] when they leave,” Mardi explained.
“The settlers are trying to take over our land,” Leith said. “When the army is present with armed settlers, that means it’s not easy. It’s not easy for us to resist.”
He added that the settlers often vandalise crops and block Palestinians from tending to their land in his village.
After facing constant threats and attacks by settlers, who are often protected by the Israeli army, Palestinians often abandon their livelihoods.
“To protect their families, they have to leave the area. Many of them have children that they need to keep safe, but they lose their main source of income [from farming] when they leave,” Mardi explained.
“The settlers are trying to take over our land,” Leith said. “When the army is present with armed settlers, that means it’s not easy. It’s not easy for us to resist.”
‘Animals have more rights than us’
United States President Donald Trump’s administration has further emboldened Israel’s settler movement, said Omar Rahman, an expert on Israel-Palestine with the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.
Rahman stressed that settlers benefit from a climate of impunity when they attack Palestinians and steal their land, yet Trump has abandoned any pretext of supporting human rights globally or backing aspirations for an independent Palestinian state.
“The other aspect is that Trump is surrounded by people who are not just backers of Israel but of ‘Greater Israel’. That means they believe the land biblically belongs [exclusively] to Israelis,” Rahman told Al Jazeera.
After Trump was inaugurated on January 20, he quickly signed an executive order to lift sanctions on settlers whom the previous administration deemed to be “extremists” and responsible for undermining the two-state solution.
The order was issued one day after a temporary ceasefire came into effect in the Gaza Strip to pause what United Nations experts and legal scholars say is a campaign of Israeli genocide against Palestinians.
The next day, settler attacks surged across the West Bank.
Palestinians expelled from their homes or uprooted from their farms are trickling into nearby villages or relocating to urban centres that are under the ostensible control of the Palestinian Authority, the entity governing major cities in the West Bank and engaged in security cooperation with Israel.
Leith said five or six families have moved into his village after settlers expelled them from their farms – all after October 7, 2023, the day the Gaza war began.
He promised to never leave his village despite growing fear of settler attacks and despite what he sees as Western apathy towards Palestinians and their plight.
“Nobody cares about human rights. Human rights is just one big lie,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Animals have more rights than us.”
Source: Al Jazeera
ReplyDeleteThis is the royal decree and sentiments of two of the kings of Jordan.
"Palestine and Jordan are one..." said King Abdullah in 1948.
"The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan," said King Hussein of Jordan, in 1981.
The decree of an useless king with no authority on a landhe couldn't rule!
ReplyDelete* The current queen of Jordan is an Arab 'Palestinian'.
ReplyDelete* Approximately half of Jordan's prime ministers since 1950 have been Arab 'Palestinians'.
* More than 2/3 of the Jordanian people are Arab 'Palestinians'.
* The majority of citizens residing in the capital of Amman are Arab 'Palestinians'.
* Arab 'Palestinians' constitute not less than one half of the members of the armed forces, according to the late King Hussein, as broadcast on Amman Radio February 3, 1973.
* The majority of other security forces are Arab 'Palestinians'.
* Jordan occupies 77% of the original Palestine Mandate (originally promised to the Jewish people). The population density of Jordan is less than 61 people per square mile leaving lots of room to absorb many more of their brethren and cousins.
Want to delve even deeper? Let's explore further. We all need to refresh our memory, as 'short-term syndrome' has taken over. Now for a little history lesson, for those who do not recall the reality of the past.
The British tried to placate the Arabs by giving them part of the land designated under the Palestine Mandate (originally allocated under the Balfour Declaration for the establishment of a Jewish homeland). Britain created an entirely new province by severing 77% of historic Palestine (and an additional 3% was also allocated to Syria), on the eastern bank of the Jordan River (some 35,000 square miles), and establishing the state of Transjordan.
Faisal, who had been King of Syria, was deposed by the French, so the British offered him the throne of Iraq, which he accepted. Faisal's brother Abdullah was installed as the new nation of Transjordan's ruler on April 1, 1921 (April Fool's Day), thereby completing the appeasement of Arab rulers.
During the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, in which nine Arab nations attacked Israel, they took control of the ancient biblical territories of Judea and Samaria (Jewish territory, which was "occupied" for nineteen years until 1967, when it was liberated and reconquered in yet another defensive war).
On April 24, 1950, Abdullah formally merged all of Arab-held Palestine with Transjordan and granted citizenship to all Arab residents and settlers (the vast majority of whom arrived the 1920s for economic reasons).
The Hashemite Kingdom was no longer only across the river so the prefix "Trans" (meaning "across") was dropped, and henceforth, the land became known as Jordan; i.e., Arab Palestine
mfer, don't twist the real histories.
DeleteA simple question - which predates which, Jordan or Palestine?
Saudi, Syria, Yemini. Oman, Emirates, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkiye and yes Israel were all created after WW1 & WW2 by Brittania, Frenchie, UN, from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. Palestine degil, tak mahu, so they were never created, never existed.
DeleteNote: poor Kurds.....they got left out, but no Muslim want to fight for their homeland, even though they are fellow Muslims, because no Jews involved with Kurds.