ISRAELI OCCUPIED WEST BANK, 18 Oct. - (ANA) - Armed Israeli settlers have rampaged through Palestinian farmland in the central West Bank village of Ein Yabrud over the past two months, cutting fences, uprooting vines, and grazing livestock on olive trees under army protection.

 

The attacks began soon after settlers erected a new outpost on a nearby hilltop, prompting the Israeli military to declare about seven square kilometres (around 2.2 miles) of surrounding farmland a "closed military area". The order barred Palestinians from their own land unless they obtained permits, while settlers faced no such restrictions and continued to ransack native farmland in the area.

 

The settlers are part of the Hilltop Youth movement, a hardline settler group made up mostly of young Jews of Western origin living in and around illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank. They are infamous for violence and have been sanctioned by the US, UK, and EU.

 

A local farmer said his family, which has cultivated olives and grapes on the same plots for five generations, depends on the land for both livelihood and identity.

 

"It's family tradition," he told The New Arab, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of Israeli reprisals. "We farm and harvest together every year. We look after our land, and it looks after us, and that's exactly why they keep targeting us."

 

After the illegal outpost was established, the family received notification from the Israeli army that their farmland had been included in a newly declared "security zone", with an order describing it as a "no-weapons area".

 

"They said we'd need permits to access our own fields," he said. "They declared it a no-weapons zone, and while of course we don't have any weapons, the extremist settlers from the Hilltop Youth who attack us daily are armed and protected."

 

 

 

 

In several videos reviewed by The New Arab, members of the group can be seen entering the vineyards of the Ein Yabrud farm in the Ramallah district carrying weapons ranging from sticks to guns, confronting the farmers, and allowing livestock to graze in their orchards.

 

"They walk in armed and protected," the farmer said. "They cut our fences, send their sheep to eat the trees, steal our tools, and even destroy our water tanks. We call the army, and when they come, they arrest us instead."

 

In one clip, a settler hides a pistol beneath his shirt after being challenged in Hebrew by a villager.

 

"This settler is known locally," the farmer said. "He was involved in a recent shooting in the nearby village of Atara. He shot two Palestinians. Everyone knows who he is."

 

The farmer explained that despite following procedures and calling Israeli police to intervene, the system always works against them.

 

"If there's any verbal confrontation, the army comes first. They're the first responders. They say they're there to separate the sides, but they only ever push us away. When we call the police, they arrest us instead. My cousin was detained the last time, even though he was the one who called them."

 

 

 

 

Israeli rights group B'Tselem has documented repeated settler raids on Ein Yabrud lands and confirmed that the neighbouring settlement of Ofra sits on property registered to Palestinians.

 

The Yesha Council, which represents settlers in the occupied West Bank, did not respond to TNA's request for comment.

 

The violent Hilltop Youth, described by Israeli media as the ideological vanguard of the settlement movement, was slapped with international sanctions in 2024 for its repeated attacks on Palestinians, which include killings, mass cases of arson, and so-called "price-tag" attacks to deter the removal of settlements.

 

According to Yesh Din, an NGO that monitors law enforcement on Israelis in the occupied West Bank, less than five percent of investigations into settler attacks on Palestinians lead to indictments.

 

 

 

 

The rise in settler attacks this autumn is not coincidental; the olive harvest season, a vital economic event and a cherished social ritual that embodies Palestinian resistance under occupation, has long been a target of settler violence.

 

During the 2024 harvest period, Yesh Din documented 113 separate incidents of violence, harassment, or crop destruction involving Israeli civilians and soldiers on land belonging to 51 Palestinian communities.

 

In around 70 percent of cases where Palestinians were barred from their land, Israeli soldiers, border police, or settlement security coordinators were physically present, and were either preventing access themselves or standing by as settlers attacked.

 

This coordination reflects a wider shift inside Israel's government. Far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the settler-led Religious Zionism Party, now holds an additional post within the Ministry of Defence, overseeing the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). His office has expanded state support for settlements while further restricting Palestinian land use.

 

In the southern West Bank village of Umm al-Khair, for instance, a COGAT unit uprooted private Palestinian olive trees for lacking permits but ignored illegal construction by settlers on adjacent land.

 

Earlier this month, Smotrich led a march of thousands of settlers calling for the full annexation of the occupied West Bank.

 

"We are continuing to take hold with our feet of the Land of Israel," he said. "With many pioneers, many heroes... we need to normalise it and make it eternal."

 

The new outpost near Ein Yabrud is part of that same policy, which sits inside Area C, an area that makes up about 60 percent of West Bank land and is under full Israeli control.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the ICC for war crimes in Gaza and has repeatedly rejected a Palestinian state, continues to approve new settlements and accompanying so-called "security zones" which seize more Palestinian land and expel its indigenous population.

 

A Reuters analysis this week, entitled 'How Israel's West Bank strategy aims to bury Palestinian statehood', found that settlements and surrounding military areas have fragmented the West Bank into disconnected enclaves, erasing the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state, as more Western nations recognise it.

 

For the farmers of Ein Yabrud, the consequences are immediate and deeply personal.

 

"They want us to stop coming to our land," the farmer said. "They want the land empty. But we keep coming back. It's ours, not theirs."

 

AB/ANA/18 October 2025 - - -