Beatings, threats at gunpoint and fleeing in terror: Inside the most aggressive West Bank land grab in 50 years

The man in Israeli military uniform sliced off Mohamed’s clothes with a knife, urinated on him, and then, after relentlessly beating him, they tried to rape him with a stick. He details the assault in the village of Wadi al-Siq, about 20 miles northeast of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.

Mohamed Mattar, 46, a Palestinian activist and humanitarian had come to this Bedouin community, to assist 30 Palestinians families that lived there. They appealed for help, as attacks by Israeli settlers across the occupied West Bank had surged and become dangerously violent, in the aftermath of Hamas’s brutal attack in southern Israel on 7 October.

There were reports that armed settlers were planning a “cleansing day” in retaliation for the Hamas that killed 1,400 people. And so on that day – 12 October – panicked families in Wadi As-Siq who had already been subjected to multiple terrifying armed raids, decided to evacuate. With Mohamed’s help they began loading the cars up, but before they could successfully leave, two pick up trucks packed with armed settlers and men in military uniforms, arrived.

Mohamed says the men, he identifies them as a mix of Israeli police, soldiers and settlers in military uniforms, forced those gathered to empty the bags gunpoint, and found kitchen knives among the belongings. Mohamed says they accused him of planning to stab one of them.

“They took me and two other men deep into the village so that no one could hear our voices. And then they took turns to hit us one by one for 2 hours,” Mohamed tells The Independent, while showing photos of his injuries immediately after the attack, and the scars which still crisscross his body. He was blindfolded and his hands were bound by metal wire which have left permanent gouge marks on his wrists.

He says one of his assailants – who he believes to be an Israeli settler in military uniform – then cut off his clothes with a knife, sprayed him with water, urinated on him and started beating him savagely with sticks, and a rifle.

“My attacker lost his mind, he started jumping on my back to break my spine like he wanted to disable me. He kept shouting “All Arabs should die, all who don’t die, should go to Jordan,” Mohamed says.

Then the man tried to insert a stick into Mohamed’s anus, he says. “I fought him hard to get him off my back to stop him from assaulting me like this. He broke the stick into three pieces by beating me.”

In the end, after multiple calls were made to Israeli military, a commander intervened. Mohamed was released and remains wounded weeks later.

But the 30 families, comprising 180 people including 25 children, were forced to flee their homes despite living in Wadi As-Siq for more than three decades.

“They told us at gunpoint we had to leave,” says Ali Arrara, 35, a father of five, speaking from a tent in an olive grove in a nearby town where he is now camping with the other displaced families.

“I wanted to take the medicine for my immunocompromised three-year-old daughter from the fridge but they wouldn’t even allow me to do that.

“They destroyed the fridge and the medicines in front of me,” he adds.

The children, who now live in fear, and cannot stop crying. Behind him one of his sons, a six-year-old boy, is in floods of tears.

“My older daughter, who is four years old, was so scared. Now whenever she sees a car or pick up truck she screams ‘they are coming’,” Ali says.

The story of Wadi as-Siq story is not an isolated one. The occupied West Bank is fast “boiling” over, according to the UN, whose top officials have repeatedly raised the alarm. They fear a spillover risk from Gaza which could open another front in this already devastating war.

Around 450,000 Jewish settlers now live in the occupied West Bank, which is home to around three million Palestinians. The settlements – which were range in size from hilltop caravans to sprawling commuter towns – are built on land captured by Israel in a 1967 war and have been steadily expanding. They are illegal under international law and are often cited as the main obstacle to peace, and a two-state solution involving Palestine.

International and local rights groups say “state-sponsored settler violence” has long been on the rise, and is used alongside building restrictions and strangling of access to amenities, to force Palestinians off their land. Most of this action is concentrated in Area C (where Wadi As-Siq is located) which makes up two thirds of the West Bank. As laid out in the second Oslo Accord of 1995 is under Israeli civilian control.

But these attacks, and land grabs, have accelerated in the last month since Hamas’s brutal massacre a month ago which Israel has responded to by ferociously bombing Gaza.

The United Nations says since 7 October there has been a seven fold increase in settler attacks on West Bank Palestinians, in comparison to two years ago. “In nearly half of all incidents, Israeli forces were either accompanying or actively supporting the attacks,” the UN’s humanitarian office OCHA says.

This year was already shaping up to be the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank in twenty years. That is now true more than ever. According to OCHA in the last month Israeli forces and settlers have killed 158 Palestinians, including 45 children. Three Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians. Fifteen people have been killed by Israeli forces in the last 24 hours alone in Jenin city and refugee camp.

Against the backdrop of violence, the UN says almost 1,000 Palestinians – like the inhabitants of Wadi As-Siq – have been displaced from their lands in the last month alone. (An additional 162 people, half of the children, are displaced because Israel has demolished their homes).

Israeli human rights groups say this is the single biggest land grab since Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, and likely amounts to the war crime of forcible transfer.

“This government is using the fact that all eyes are on Gaza right now to promote its agenda of taking over more Palestinian land,” said Roy Yellin of Btselem, an Israeli rights group that has documented the forced displacement of 15 Palestinian communities across the West Bank since 7 October .

“State-backed setter violence is one of the tools in this forced displacement. The threats are concrete: armed individuals threaten them with weapons and tell them they have 24 hours to leave. The inhabitants of Wadi As-Siq left without their belongings.”

The Independent has asked the military about these incidents and several others which have been caught on camera. The Independent spoke to one man who appeared in a video of eight Palestinian men blindfolded and bound on the ground, and partially stripped in Yatta ,around 35 miles (55 kilometres) south of Wadi As-Siq. The man confirmed the incident but said he was too upset to talk about it.

Another disturbing video which surfaced online last week, also reportedly filmed in Yatta, shows several men in Israeli uniform dragging a group of naked Palestinian workers on top of each other. One of the men in uniform kicks one of the men in the face. The Independent has been unable to verify the video.

The Israeli military said “the conduct of the force that emerges from the footage is deplorable and does not comply with the army’s orders. The circumstances of the incident are being examined.”

The military added that the conduct of the individuals that appeared in other videos “is not in line with the IDF’s orders” .

They did not comment on the actions of the individuals wearing military uniforms who attacked Wadi As-Siq on 12 October or the other communities who spoke to The Independent.

The military said the said main body responsible for handling claims for law violations by Israelis is the Israel Police, and so Palestinians should file a complaint with them.

“When IDF soldiers encounter incidents of violations of the law by Israelis, and especially violent incidents or incidents directed at Palestinians and their property, they are required to act to stop the violation and, if necessary, to delay or detain the suspects until the police arrive at the scene. IDF soldiers are instructed to act as follows,” the military added.

But the levels of violence have even worried Israel’s closest allies. US President Joe Biden has unsuccessfully lobbied Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rein in the violence from settlers. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said this week Washington had repeatedly “made very clear our concerns about extremist violence in the West Bank.”

“We’ve heard the Israeli government make commitments on dealing more effectively with that, and we’re watching very closely to make sure that that happens,” he said recently.

In a letter to Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has also raised his concerns about the “sharp increase in violence and displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank”

“With homes vandalised, water supplies cut, livestock stolen and civilians threatened at gunpoint,” he said. “As the occupying power, Israel has obligations under international law that it must uphold”.

Rights groups say the biggest concern right now is the fact that settlers feel emboldened, with hate against Palestinians having surged post-7 October. It comes as the Israeli government drives to sign setters up to the military and new civilian rapid-response teams in the occupied West Bank in the wake of the Hamas attack.

The national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir – a far-right pro-settler politician – has gone as far as to announce that this ministry is purchasing thousands of rifles to arm these new militias.

Haaretz, a left-leaning Israeli daily newspaper, has reported that the military intends to recruit settlers aged between 27 and 50, who have not undergone military service.

“The recruits are expected to undergo accelerated basic training for three weeks, after which they will be armed and stationed in the settlements,” the paper wrote, adding that since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, the IDF has handed out some 8,000 weapons to regional defence battalions in the West Bank.

The concerns of mass arming of settlers has prompted the US into action. On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said that Washington had sought assurances from Israel that a new shipment of US rifles, including M-16s, would only go to government agencies not civilian rapid-response.

“We have heard from the Israeli government that they are going to make a commitment on dealing with extremist violence more effectively,” Patel said.

For the Palestinians it is extremely frightening. Rania Zuwahara, 43 and a mother-of-ten, is among 85 villagers who were forced out of their home of Ein Rashash, near to Wadi As-Siq, recently. She says residents have long dealt with attacks from settlers but their “fear is 10 times worse after the war,”.

She said her community was threatened with armoured bulldozers and men with rifles multiple times before the final attack a few week ago. The village is now scattered across multiple locations, they have no idea where they will live in the long term.

“This was our land for 33 years and we were evicted from it at gunpoint. It is a hellish feeling you can’t explain. We lived in fear every day,” she says, .

“It is so obvious what they [settlers] are doing – they have been trying to do this long before het war, but they are pushing forward ten times as hard”.