Jirbet Zamuta no longer exists. The 250 residents of this precarious town in the inhospitable hills south of the West Bank city of Hebron kept things going for three years, but attacks and threats from ultranationalist settlers in the area in the last few weeks after the Hamas attack have reached such a level Point at which they resigned themselves to dismantling their homes and reassembling them a few miles away, hoping that the physical distance would somehow protect them.
The transporters cruise loaded with feed, mattresses or pieces of sheet metal and wood from their huts. On the back of a van there is a poster for an international cooperation project that seems almost sarcastic today, on the last day of the forced relocation: “Humanitarian support for Palestinians who are threatened with forced relocation in the West Bank.” It was sponsored by the European Union and several Community countries, including Spain, as can be seen from the logos.
The “risk” existed before the current Gaza war, but has increased since then. Between 2022 and October 7 last year, more than 1,100 people, mostly Bedouins who make a living from agriculture and livestock, were forced to disband their communities and seek new homes due to settler violence, a phenomenon they have already described as worrying. international organizations and NGOs. They move to other locations in the West Bank, just a few kilometers from where they live. According to September data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), six communities were completely displaced and twenty were partially displaced.
A destroyed house, this Wednesday in Jirbet Zanuta.Álvaro García
An abandoned vehicle, near Jirbet Zanuta.Álvaro García
Remains of a container carrying humanitarian aid, this Wednesday in the southern West Bank. Alvaro Garcia
The 250 residents of Jirbet Zamuta have left the town after attacks by ultranationalist settlers. Alvaro Garcia
The number in the last four weeks, as the West Bank simmered and all eyes were on Gaza, is close to the number in the previous 21 months: 828 displaced people, including 313 children, according to OCHA. On the one hand, the prevailing atmosphere of revenge is not helping soldiers protect the West Bank from the actions of their more radical compatriots, who are demanding revenge on all Palestinians for the attack in which Hamas killed 1,400 people.
It’s not just a feeling of greater impunity. Also military mobilization. Some religious ultra-nationalist settlers are included in the quota of more than 300,000 reservists called up, but comply without changing their base. That is, some of those who until the 7th could only receive short weapons and had no authority can now wear military uniforms and carry long weapons.
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According to OCHA data, an average of seven settler-related incidents have occurred daily in the West Bank since the war began. The three per day in the first eight months of the year (in which religious ultra-nationalism began to gain unprecedented weight in the Israeli government) was already the highest average since the United Nations began counting in 2006.
In Jirbet Zamuta, Abdul Halim al Til, 40, tells what the deterioration was like. A few years ago he was turning out his cattle (his main source of income) without any problems. Then the settlers began entering at night to empty the water tanks (the city cannot be connected to running water) and scare off the livestock with drones. “Since the beginning of the war we have not dared to advance more than a few meters. The army will come soon,” he says, apologizing for not being able to offer more than a glass of hot cola.
“Here and now, life is impossible and life is the most important thing. There is no security. Since the beginning of the war, settlers and soldiers have come every day at dawn and dusk. “They beat people, they burn down houses, they break windows or they empty our water tanks,” says Moaz al Til about the last remains of Jirbet Zamuta: concrete houses from which they have already removed the zinc roof and which you can still see into a few shishas (water pipes), discarded clothing and even the last of the potatoes and onions. An elderly man sobs in front of his hut, the refrigerator is already outside and in front of a small water tanker.
The testimonies underscore one idea: It is no longer clear whether the settlers arrive with the support of soldiers or whether they are all soldiers. “There are settlers who we knew by sight, who we knew came from the settlement, and now they come in uniform,” says Moaz. Last week, he says, they held a gun to his father’s head and told him, “If you don’t go, we’ll kill you all.”
Two children on a tractor, south of the West Bank. Alvaro Garcia
Three Palestinians were expelled by Israel to the south of the West Bank this Wednesday. Alvaro Garcia
A man expelled from Jirbet Zamuta on Wednesday. Alvaro Garcia
A woman expelled from Jirbet Zamuta. Alvaro Garcia
“I am not armed. You yes. They come and beat us, but if I throw a stone they arrest me. Well, in the end I’m leaving. It’s over. This is the last day and we are not coming back here. On the next page we will see what happens next. And if we have problems there again, we’ll go to another one,” he adds.
Jirbet Zamuta symbolizes the transition from the previous “efforts to displace” communities, “led by the state” of Israel through administrative and legal means, to the current phase in which “settler violence” acts as the tip of the spear, says Yehuda Shaul, activist and co-founder of Ofek analysis center.
In this context, due to the structure of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, the communities are left with no other help than the presence of a handful of activists – mostly Israelis, taking turns as best they can to act as a deterrent – and some EU members projects that are on to be torn down at the end without consequences.
Two parallel legal systems
Jirbet Zamuta is located in Zone C, the largest (60%) of the three zones into which the West Bank was divided by the 1993 Oslo Accords and where the Israeli army has full control, both administratively and security-wise. Half a million Jewish settlers and 300,000 Palestinians live there with two parallel legal systems: Israeli civil law for the former and martial law for the latter. Palestinians are effectively banned from building in Zone C, with more than 90% of applications rejected and demolitions occurring every two days. In fact, they build without permission and often don’t even ask for one. In addition, the more than 200 pastoral communities not “recognized” by Israel, such as Jirbet Zamuta, have no connection to the electricity or water network, and all their buildings – whether made of concrete, huts, agricultural structures or a solar panel – are considered illegal.
The Palestinian Authority (PNA) cannot operate in Area C, but offered its assistance to local council chairman Fayez al Til. “I answered them: ‘The only help I need is for the settlement where the settlers come from to disappear. And you can’t give that to me,” he says along with the school.
With Jirbet Zamuta deserted, activists are trying to prevent nearby Susia from suffering the same fate. “I’ve been hoping for 20 years, but it makes me give up,” says one of its residents and key activists, Nasser Nawaya. There is a demolition order for all buildings. It was not applied due to international pressure after two decades of litigation that saw the number of families rise from 80 to 32. [unas 300 personas] and in which it was demolished and rebuilt.
But these days are different. “Today we can no longer distinguish between settlers and soldiers […] There are settlers we know, against whom we have filed complaints, we have seen them beaten. Today they are the army, they have the law in their hands,” says Nawaya, before recalling that a soldier he has never had problems with recently told them: “We will blow up your house , like in Gaza.” “Nowadays they look at us as if all Palestinians carried out the attack [del día 7]”, the mint.
Panoramic view of the city of Hebron, this Wednesday.Álvaro García
Car access is completely blocked, so they cannot go out onto the streets to buy food or sell their wares in the much larger Hebron or Yata. On the 16th, he says, a group of Israelis with their faces covered entered his house and immediately took away their phones so they couldn’t record anything. After two hours, they were given two options: “You leave in 24 hours or we will kill you,” he said.
New form of expansion
Although the war accelerated displacement, the phenomenon was already reaching a worrying pace. Last September, the 89 members of Al Qabun village moved to Al Mugayer land in the northern West Bank. “We were afraid and said, ‘Either all the families stay or we all go together,'” Hassan Abu al Qbash said at the new site after reporting that the settlers – usually armed – roamed the area at night and even the area entered houses, damaged cisterns, set fires, freed livestock or frightened them by driving by in SUVs with loud music. Some of these incidents are documented. “They even opened the refrigerator, took our phones and started interrogating us,” Abu al Qbash said, before voicing a common complaint: When someone from his clan called the security forces, they came late or never.
In Qabun there were only a handful of bare furniture and the skeleton of a school, with the cardboard still showing the seasons. And in Al Mugayer the nights are colder and there is less grass. “From the north of Tubas to the south of Hebron [toda Cisjordania en vertical]“We didn’t have many other options,” he laments. “We are originally farmers. “It’s what we can do.”
The dynamic is linked to a new form of territorial expansion: farming settlements. A handful of buildings on a hill where a family lives and a group of ultra-nationalist teenagers who work the land and look after the livestock. For Shaul, they are “the most successful way to conquer territory since 1967.” The settler movement has been working hard to establish them for the last decade and today there are about 70 of them. “It is a new concept that allows us to conquer a large amount of land with very few people,” explains Dror Etkes, an Israeli activist who has been following the movement for years. Settlement development and founder of the NGO Kerem Navot. According to their calculations, a year and a half ago they occupied 7% of Area C of the West Bank. Last September 10%. He still hasn’t calculated how much.
An Israeli police vehicle patrols a street in the southern West Bank.Álvaro García
The farm settlements are illegal not only for the international community but also for Israel because they were built without permits. Some were demolished by the authorities and later rebuilt. Nevertheless, it usually doesn’t take long until they receive water and electricity connections, military protection and an access road. In February, the executive branch approved the retroactive legalization of nine, including Malajei Hashalom, which led to the abandonment of Al Qabun. Four months later, after a deadly Palestinian attack on the Eli settlement, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir urged young people: “Go to the mountains! There must be a whole settlement here. Not just here, but in all the hills around us”.
Religious nationalism has viewed Zone C as a battleground for land for years. Uri Jever, Director of the Regional Council of the Kiriat Arba Settlement, emphasized in 2021 the importance of looking for points of agricultural development and betting on “serious agriculture that preserves the country”. “There is a saying in Arabic: ‘Abandoned property teaches people to steal.’ “What we don’t use, what we don’t grab, someone else will get,” he said in an online conference hosted by Amana, an anti-colonization organization.
This summer Israel demolished the school in Ein Samia, one of six towns whose residents had left before the war. Built with EU funds, it was the only building left standing since its residents demolished the rest when they left two months earlier. “The State of Israel will not allow illegal construction or the takeover of outdoor areas by Arabs,” said Bezalel Smotrich, finance minister in charge of civil affairs in the region.
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