settler

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank know they shouldn’t ask what time their loved ones are going to make it home.

There’s simply no way to give an accurate answer. What used to be a short ride from one place to another could now take hours, or it might not happen at all.

Before driving, Palestinians check dedicated WhatsApp and Telegram groups and channels where people share updates on road conditions. But this isn’t typical traffic news: Instead, chats focus on which Israeli military checkpoints are open, which roads are off limits to Palestinians and whether Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians as they drive their vehicles.

Sometimes pins are sent to warn people driving near towns where Israeli forces are conducting raids.

And if there’s no time to check the groups, then there’s always Basma FM. The Palestinian radio station, based in Rawabi near Ramallah, carries three traffic updates per hour.

The channel started broadcasting on October 2, 2023 – just days before the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 and the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and what has become a pogrom against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“Our idea was to target young people. We wanted to offer entertainment and culture news. But five days later, we realised we couldn’t,” said Fatima Barqawi, Basma FM’s news and traffic director.

The team had originally planned traffic updates as part of their programming. “We thought we could tell parents picking up their children from school to know where there was traffic, but after the war on Gaza started, we had to shift focus,” Barqawi said.

Her department has seven employees who verify information with their sources and provide updates on roadblocks.

“Things change each second. We could say there’s a closed checkpoint and Israeli soldiers decide to reopen it. Or vice versa,” Barqawi explained.

Dangers on the roads

The issue for Palestinians driving through the West Bank isn’t simply being late for appointments or held up for hours – it’s that there is an inherent danger to travelling in the occupied territory.

Palestinians in the West Bank drive white-plated vehicles, making them easily identifiable compared to the yellow-plated cars driven by Israeli settlers.

Israeli soldiers have killed Palestinians near checkpoints after claiming they were conducting ramming attacks, and Israeli settlers often attack Palestinian cars or block them from using certain highways.

These attacks are increasing as illegal Israeli settlements grow at a record pace.

It is hard to miss the large infrastructure projects Israel is implementing, expanding highways to connect Israeli settlements to one another and to Israel. This ends up isolating Palestinian communities, often forcing Palestinians to use poorly paved roads or dangerous mountainous routes to avoid Israeli settlers and roadblocks.

It’s a journey of fear and anxiety, a young Palestinian woman who did not wish to be named told Al Jazeera. “I used to blast my music and drive, now I’m on high alert. Always on edge.”

The woman recounted how Israeli soldiers assaulted her fiancé near a checkpoint in Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank, because they mistakenly thought he had passed without stopping. A year later, she said, a soldier pointed his rifle at her.

“He was shouting at me. The sun was blocking my view, and I was careful crossing the checkpoint but that wasn’t enough. I saw the green beam [from the gun] and thought that was the end,” she said.

Attacks at checkpoints

Many Palestinians report being assaulted, humiliated and sometimes arrested at these checkpoints and roadblocks.

Israel has long imposed movement restrictions on Palestinians, controlling the road system and Palestinians’ access to the wider world. But since the war on Gaza began, these restrictions have intensified.

As of December 2025, the United Nations documented 925 barriers across the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, a 43 percent increase over the 20-year annual average of 647, the UN’s humanitarian affairs agency, OCHA, reported.

Almost all of of the villages and cities in the West Bank have iron gates at their entrances, and Israeli forces close them arbitrarily. Some of the gates are only open during certain hours.

A new report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the restrictions are used to deliberately fragment Palestinian life, with roadblocks and military checkpoints cutting off people from their work, schools, hospitals and one another.

The report, titled The Elimination Project, says there’s a broad rapid and systematic Israeli assault in the West Bank that aims to dismantle the foundations of Palestinian existence, and road closures are just one of them.

That is why, as Heba Erkat prepared her notes before heading into the studio for Basma FM’s Wednesday afternoon bulletin, she knew the information about to be read out could change rapidly.

Her colleague read the news, and then Erkat started listing updates at 61 checkpoints across the West Bank.

It was a relatively good day: only 12 of the checkpoints were either closed or had long queues.

But, as Erkat noted at the end of the segment, “the situation changes by the minute”.

Israeli troops opened fire Saturday at a group of Palestinians who did not appear to be posing a threat in the occupied West Bank, wounding one man, according to video obtained by The Associated Press.

The video, shot by an eyewitness, showed the man falling to the ground near the Palestinian village of Faqqua, north of the West Bank.

At least 14 shots in total were fired during the duration of the video. They continued as several men rushed to move the injured man to safety before setting him down and tying a tourniquet around his leg in an apparent attempt to stop the bleeding.

Mahmoud Shahin, a resident of the village, said the Palestinians had rushed to the area after receiving reports that Israeli settlers had arrived there with a flock of sheep. He said Israeli soldiers then came and began firing in the air and toward the Palestinians.

He added that the wounded man was undergoing surgery at a hospital in Jenin.

Israel’s military said the video was authentic and confirmed its forces had fired toward the Palestinians, wounding one man, and said commanders would review the incident.

Under the ultranationalist government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, settler violence in the West Bank has surged. The international community largely considers Israeli settlements to be illegal and obstacles to peace.

Over 700,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians as parts of a future state.

NEW YORK CITY: About 4,100 Palestinians have been displaced across the West Bank so far this year as a result of demolitions and settler violence, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Thursday.

He warned of a sharp rise in demolitions in the Masafer Yatta area of the southern West Bank in recent days. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Israeli authorities demolished 20 homes and other structures, including a water cistern and solar panels, in two Palestinian herding communities there on Tuesday.

This activity, and demolitions in a nearby third community on Wednesday, displaced nearly 60 people, half of them children, and affected a further 30 seasonal residents. Many of the destroyed properties were built with donor support, Haq said.

Masafer Yatta is home to about 1,200 Palestinians in 13 communities, all of whom have been under pressure to leave after Israeli authorities designated the area a “firing zone.”

Haq said humanitarian officials have reported increased violence by Israeli settlers targeting those communities following the establishment in recent years of settlement outposts nearby.

Representatives of the UN and its humanitarian partners visited Masafer Yatta on Tuesday to speak with displaced residents who are receiving emergency shelter, food, hygiene items, baby products and psychosocial support, Haq said.

Across the West Bank, he added, about 1,500 Palestinians have been displaced so far this year as a result of demolitions, and more than 2,600 have been displaced by settler violence and related access restrictions.

Amid the grapevines that once provided a steady income for her family, 56-year-old Palestinian farmer Theeba al-Sabaa spends much of her day guarding her home and farmland in the occupied West Bank from settlers.

From dusk till dawn, she works on her land in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, known by locals as “Jabal Sabaa”.

Theeba is engaged in a daily battle against the encroaching settler outposts that have emerged among the rolling hills that surround her, and which block access to sections of her land.

“By God, the land has taught me patience, and to cling to my right, for as long as I have a right, I must take it and never let it go,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I will never leave it because I worked hard on it, I toil and sweat on it, so I will not leave my toil and sweat, or the toil of my children and my husband, to go to someone else.”

Weaponising livestock

Since mid-2024, when settlers established new outposts on the nearby hills, every one of Theeba’s moves has been monitored.

Settlers frequently approach the perimeter of her home and deliberately release livestock into the cultivated fields.

“They enter with their sheep into our land after we plow and fix it, grazing in it, trampling the crops, and stomping on them with their sheep, leaving nothing,” Theeba said.

“As soon as they feel any movement or anyone entering the land, you find them attacking us immediately.”

This intimidation extends to the adjacent fields, where 59-year-old Anwar Sabarneh lives with his extended family of seven brothers.

Due to the repeated settler violations, two of his brothers have been forced to abandon their land.

Sabarneh, who supports a family of 14, owns several dunams of vineyards located just 300 metres (980 feet) from his home. With aggressive settlers around, reaching them has become a dangerous ordeal.

Military complicity

Sabarneh said that the Israeli army even demands permits from Palestinians to work on their own land.

“The army came with the settlers to ask me for a permit so I can work in my home, in front of my house’s door, and on my land where I am the rightful owner,” Sabarneh said.

Farmers are also barred from building anything on their land. Sabarneh’s sheep have also been locked in a barn for over eight months due to the dangers posed by settlers.

“If they see me taking the sheep out, the settlers chase me, kidnap them, and steal them,” he said.

When Sabarneh’s children have tried to retrieve their stolen sheep, Israeli soldiers have arrested and beaten them.

A forced exodus

Repeated pogroms by settlers against Palestinian farmers reflect a broader strategy targeting agriculture across the southern West Bank.

Settlers and the Israeli troops carried out 11,074 attacks in the West Bank during the first half of 2026, according to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission. This includes 3,488 carried out by settlers.

Hasan Breijieh, a settlement affairs expert and director at the commission, told Al Jazeera that continuous settlement expansionism, alongside restrictions on Palestinian movement, are the primary reasons that so many Palestinians have been forced to flee their farms.

“Military gates erected at the entrances of Palestinian communities have tightened control over…  access to their orchards and vineyards,” he said.

Bypass roads, built by Israel, have also hindered “connectivity between Palestinian communities”, Breijieh said.

Under such restrictions, Palestinian farmers have faced a fourth consecutive season without being able to harvest olives, grapes, or guava. Their lands have been “neither plowed nor pruned”, and have been forcibly abandoned.

In the face of such oppression, Palestinian women like Theeba al-Sabaa have continued to play a pivotal role in protecting their land, particularly when men have been killed or detained by Israeli forces.

“They continue to maintain their leadership role in preserving the family’s agricultural legacy today,” Breijieh said. “This land was historically the primary source of livelihood for families, and a Palestinian cannot leave it voluntarily, no matter the sacrifices.”

He recalled his own grandfather, who went to his fields to bid farewell before dying. “Goodbye, vineyard,” he said to his land.

At least 81 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since the start of the year, according to the UN’s figures. At least 23 of those deaths have occurred in the context of settler attacks.

Three Israelis, both security forces and civilians, have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank over the same period, the UN says.

The Israeli military has faced mounting criticism for actively participating in settler attacks on Palestinians, standing by, or failing to prosecute those responsible.

On Thursday, Israel’s police force said a 19-year-old settler had been arrested on suspicion of participating in an attack on the Palestinian village of Qusra on Saturday. It marks the first such arrest in weeks of attacks on Qusra.

Dozens of masked settlers descended on the village, surrounding a house while Palestinians were trapped inside, and throwing stones.

Israeli soldiers who were deployed to the scene reportedly detained the trapped Palestinians but not the settlers, allowing them to leave. The Israeli military said troops removed “rioters” and protected residents.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a future state – during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

The settlements are illegal under international law.

In a separate development on Wednesday, Israeli forces demolished the Palestinian village of Khirbet al-Tabban, in the Masafer Yatta area.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the village’s 70 residents, including 28 children, were given no warning prior to the demolition and were not allowed to remove their property.

It described the demolition as the most significant in Masafer Yatta since May 2025.

In the 1980s, the Israeli military declared about 3,000 hectares in the South Hebron Hills, which includes Masafer Yatta, as a restricted firing zone for training purposes.

The military says the Palestinian homes there have been built illegally.

In 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled to allow the demolition of homes in the firing zone and the expulsion of their residents, who had argued that such a move violated international law and that their families had been living there since before the State of Israel was established.

B’Tselem says Khirbet al-Tabban is the 66th Palestinian community to be expelled by Israeli authorities since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, which it alleges is part of a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” being carried out in the West Bank.