Today, Explained - Inside the occupied West Bank

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

With the world focused on Gaza, Israeli settlers and soldiers are increasing attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. Writer Nathan Thrall and journalist Dalia Hatuqa explain the decades of tension that shape life in the West Bank. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Serena Solin and Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, the eyes of the world have been on Gaza, understandably. But another front in this conflict is the West Bank, which is a kidney bean-shaped piece of land on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Palestinians live in the West Bank alongside Jewish settlers, people who have pushed into the area seeking land and housing, who've built cities, and who believe they have a right to be there even though most of the international community has condemned their settlements as illegal. Some settlers violently attack the Palestinians living there with impunity. And since this war began, those attacks have gotten bad enough for the eyes of the world to occasionally leave Gaza and look to the West Bank. I continue to be alarmed about extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, that pouring gasoline on fire is what this is like.

Ahead on Today Explained. groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. This is Today Explained. My name is Nathan Thrall. So for a decade, I worked with an organization called the International Crisis Group, which is a conflict prevention organization that works in some dozens of conflict areas all over the world. And I was in charge of Israel-Palestine managing a small team in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. Nathan is the author of a new book called A Day in the Life of Abed Salama about a Palestinian father from the West Bank searching for his son who's gone missing after a bus accident. The book tells some of the history of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and illustrates why Israel faces mighty criticism for its support of settlers, not just from Palestinians, but also from

some Israelis and from the international community. I asked Nathan to start by telling us what the West Bank looks like and who lives there. The West Bank is quite hilly. It has a mountain ridge running through the middle of it, north to south. And it is covered with Israeli settlements. And these settlements in the popular imagination are a set of caravans haphazardly erected on a hilltop. But in fact, they are towns and cities that look identical to the communities of similar size within Israel proper, and they are connected seamlessly to Israel proper. The residents of these communities include Israel's elite, they include Supreme Court justices, they include ministers in the Israeli government and many, many other government employees and leaders in industry. And these people are able to live in these communities precisely because they have been

segregated from the Palestinian population that surrounds them, and they have been given roads that cut through these Palestinian communities without having exits or entrances for the Palestinian communities that these highways pass through. the illusion that they are living in a Jewish-only zone, where they don't really have to confront or think about the Palestinians who are just beside them. And they can go very easily to their workplaces in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and believe that they are living in a suburb just like any other. How long have the settlements, the Israeli settlements, been in the West Bank? The settlement project began really as soon as Israel conquered the West Bank in East Jerusalem. In the years that followed the war in 1967, Israeli civilians, settlers, started moving into the West Bank.

They are the children of Ofra, a new settlement of 40 Jewish families on what once was Arab land. Those settlements were created by the Israeli center-left that had been in power since the establishment of the state in 1948 and remained in power until 1977. So for the first decade of the settlement project, it was driven by center-left governments. And it's important to stress, it was driven by the government. This is not a story of a bunch of radicals twisting the arm of the state against its will,

which is how it's often depicted. This is a state-driven project, and it is in fact the greatest project, the largest and most expensive project that the state of Israel has undertaken. And so as the settlers have moved in, how have they justified this? There are a number of different motivations for moving to the settlements. Broadly speaking, there are three groups of settlers. There are ideologically driven settlers who believe that the West Bank is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and that they have every right to build homes and establish Israeli sovereignty in these areas, no less so than Israel had a right to establish settlements in 78% of historic Palestine, the borders of Israel

prior to 1967. And this is an argument that they make to their detractors in Israeli politics. The second type of settler is just an ordinary middle class or upper middle class person who is moving there because there are financial incentives to do so. You can have a nicer home, a larger home, a less expensive home. And because it has all been set up in a way that makes it painless to live there and gives you the sense that this is really no different than any other suburb, members of the middle class do move there. And what happens over time is they often start to shift ideologically after moving there because every human being naturally wants to feel justified in what they're doing. And the third type are ultra-Orthodox Jews, and they historically had avoided living in

settlements, but that changed. And they live in a few settlements, but they're very large and dense, and those settlements are for the most part closer to the edge of the West Bank, closer to the boundary with pre-1967 Israel. How do Palestinian and Jewish residents of the West Bank interact with each other? Do they interact with each other typically? The Palestinian and Jewish communities in the West Bank are entirely segregated, and the settlements have gates at their entrances and security guards at those gates, and Palestinians are not allowed to enter them unless they are coming as pre-approved workers,

as cleaners or gardeners or construction workers. That's the degree of segregation that exists in the West Bank. Okay, so this is a highly unequal situation. If you are Palestinian in the West Bank, you are subject to restrictions. You are subject to inequities. But then on top of that, Nathan, we hear about settler violence. What does this refer to? What does that mean? So settler violence is a broad term that includes everything from settlers going and burning down all of trees of Palestinians who live nearby. It includes raids on Palestinian communities in the middle of the night. It includes activities that Israeli officials even have referred to as pogroms, such as the burning of all kinds of property in the town of Hawara earlier this year

or in the town of Turmus Aya last June. Dozens of settlers came here. They tried to enter the courtyard and they set cars on fire. They started shooting towards the house using live bullets and stones and they broke the balconies. The Palestinians who are attacked are entirely defenseless in this situation. They know that if they lay a single finger on an armed settler who enters their home, they can be arrested and put in jail and locked up in what is known as administrative detention, which is detention without trial or charge. Israel can do that

for six months to somebody and then extend it indefinitely. It's unbelievable that people spending years and years under administrative detentions with no charges. They don't know why. They don't know for how long. And so when a Palestinian encounters a settler militia, they know that putting their finger on that settler is not putting their hand on an individual. It's putting their hand on the entire state of Israel, this enormous machine that controls their every movement and that can arrest them and their family members at any moment.

How is it that the settlers can commit such violence without legal repercussions? Where does the law fit in here? The law doesn't fit in here because there is total impunity for the settlers. When there are cases filed against settlers for attacks on Palestinians, fewer than 10% result in an indictment, and only 3% result in a conviction. That's data from the last 18 years. And now, after October 7th, when most of the regular army is off in Gaza or on the border with Lebanon, you have those same settlers who were attacking the Palestinian communities several months ago, now in uniform with full authority to do those same attacks as the army.

We know that there will be an end in Gaza. We don't know what it is. And it sounds as though the Netanyahu government and the international community are actively debating, discussing what the end in Gaza will look like. But in the West Bank, it seems as though there is no end in mind. How do you envision this playing out? Where do you think this is all leading, Nathan? No matter how long this war in Gaza lasts, whether it's weeks or months or years, at the end of it, we are going to be in the situation that we were in

on October 6th, which is 7 million Palestinians, 7 million Jews, all living under Israeli rule. And the vast majority of those Palestinians don't have basic civil rights. That's the situation that the international community and the United States will need to address if they want to see an end to this recurrent bloodshed. That's Nathan Thrall. His estimable new book is called A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. Coming up, a reporter who covers the West Bank on what Palestinians there have been experiencing since October 7th. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You're listening to Today Explained. My name is Dalia Hatouka. I'm a journalist. I've been working on Israel-Palestine for about 23 years now. Dalia splits her time between Amman, Jordan and Ramallah in the West Bank, where she reports on the lives of people there. I think mostly what I'd like to see is for people to really get to know life as it is in the West

Bank. I'd like them to really get to know Palestinians and not to have these preset thoughts about who Palestinians are. Dahlia sees her job as clearing up misconceptions about Palestinians in the West Bank. I think one of them is the idea that somehow Palestinians hate Israelis or hate Jews. I don't think that's true. I think if there's anybody who really understands Israelis and Jews are probably Palestinians. I think that no matter what, our fate is united, in a sense. We have a shared fate, I would say, because we're both not going anywhere, and we're going to have to find a way to live on this land together. Dalia and Nathan Thrall both describe a situation in the West Bank in which Palestinians

are very unsafe and violence is perpetrated by settlers supported by Israeli forces. I asked Dalia, what happened in the West Bank after Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel? So the things that I've been seeing in the West Bank are kind of reminiscent of the days of the second intifada. So an increase in the settler attacks, both in quantity and also in the ferocity, an increase in the numbers of Israeli military checkpoints, the humiliation of Palestinians at set checkpoints, etc. So since the 7th of October, we've had at least 200 Palestinians, a quarter of them children killed by Israeli forces, and an additional eight, including one child that had been killed by Israeli settlers.

We've seen raids, Israeli military raids being carried out every day, almost, in the West Bank, where Israeli forces are rounding up mostly Palestinian men. Some of them are members of Hamas, but many others are not. We're talking 2,000 people that have been detained since October 7th. Dahlia, when we hear settler violence, what should we envision? Because I'm trying to imagine the circumstances in which a settler, which I understand to be a civilian, not somebody who's in the army, ends up killing a Palestinian child. And it's a little beyond what I can imagine. How do these interactions unfold? First, I'm not really sure what the designation of international humanitarian law is for settlers,

but they are armed. They're armed to the teeth, irrespective of what their designation is. Far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gavir, a settler himself, loosening gun regulations for Israelis and announcing plans to purchase 10,000 rifles for civilian security teams in the West Bank. In other words, for settlers. On the 11th of October, I was talking to this man called Ibrahim Alwadi. He was talking to me because some people had been shot and killed by settlers and soldiers in a village near Nablus in the northern West Bank. He was telling me that he witnessed an uptick in Israeli settler violence in his village. And he was talking about how the attacks were relentless. What happens is that these villages are normally surrounded by settlements,

which sit at the top of the hill, while the Palestinian cities or towns or villages are usually at the bottom. So the settlers are overlooking these towns or villages. Anyways, his village is encircled by these settlements. And the next day, he went with his son to attend the funeral of four Palestinians who had been shot by settlers the day I spoke to him. It was a funeral procession. And Ibrahim and his son Ahmed were attending, as many others from the village were as well. But the procession came to a halt when settlers arrived and started throwing rocks. And then they started using live ammunition.

And both Ibrahim and his son were shot dead. But before he was killed, Ibrahim was saying to me that he was worried that the settlers would use the Gaza war as a cover to carry out more attacks. No one has been taken into custody or charged with their murder. A few weeks ago, a Palestinian man was shot dead also by Israeli settlers while working with his family in an olive grove. I talked to a friend of mine whose aunt and uncle are two elderly folks in the village of Taybe. They're Palestinian Americans. They were also attacked by settlers as they were in their olive groves. It's olive season at the moment. And that's when settlers come out,

like they end up, you know, stealing the crops, the tools, the ladders. They torch vehicles, even trees. I mean, my heart is with these trees. These trees are like hundred year old olive trees. Anyways, and the old folks, like the woman's like 82 years old. Her wrist was broken. Her husband was hit in the head with a rock. I could go on and on. But these are some of the

things that people go through when I say there's a settler attack. It's the kind of like it's a situation where these armed people come down from their settlements, which are fortresses, so to speak, and they attack Palestinians and take what they want, torch what they want. And a lot of the times it's under the protection of the Israeli army. All the time make a problem for us because they want to see this land without Palestinians. But Palestinians are here. We are here. When you interview Palestinians in the West Bank after incidents like this, and this is, as you've said, been going on for years, what do they say about their place in the West Bank? What is the mood among Palestinians there? So the mood oscillates

between charged and cautious. It moves between fear and anticipation. Life is very hard here. For example, we can't go out because of the checkpoints and roadblocks, and we're constantly worried we could be killed at any time. You get a sense that people are afraid of a repetition of the 2002 Israeli invasion that destroyed much of the West Bank's infrastructure and left many people dead. And I think that a repetition of that invasion is in people's minds, like when they clear out grocery store shelves, for example, because they're worried that there's going to be a stretch of long days where they're being trapped inside due to an army curfew, which may or may not come. But that's the kind of fear that people have. Do Palestinians in

the West Bank have confidence in their government? No, especially during these past few weeks since October 7th. There are demonstrations against Israel's bombardment in Gaza, but some of the anger has been directed against the Palestinian Authority. In one incident, for example, protesters threw chairs and other items at Palestinian Authority security forces, and these guys lobbed tear gas and stun grenades. Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, has been calling for a ceasefire. He can speak, but almost no one's listening to him. He's 87 years old. He's presided over the Palestinian Authority since 2005. He's weak and unpopular. More than 80% of Palestinians said that they wanted Abbas to step aside and make room for a new leader. I think they want a new leadership that speaks to their aspirations. And I think

people don't have confidence in him whatsoever. The sentiment permeating in the West Bank is one of loneliness and isolation, I would say, and also vulnerability. Palestinians feel that there is no one to protect them. I think that what will happen is the international community will continue to pump money and support for the Palestinian Authority because they can't envision anybody else taking over. They're also afraid of a scenario similar to what happened in Gaza, where Hamas takes over. And so my fear for the West Bank is that in addition to the political status quo, the status quo on the ground is going to be turning into an opportunity for settlers to take up more territory.

While everybody has kind of shifted their attention, and rightly so, to Gaza, in the West Bank, we've seen attempts by settlers to carry out these displacements and land theft. That was Dalia Hatouka. She's an independent journalist based in Ramallah, in the West Bank and in Amman, Jordan. Today's episode was produced by Avishai Artsy and edited by Matthew Collette. Laura Bullard and Serena Solon are our fact checkers and Patrick Boyd is our engineer. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you