The Israeli military and Jewish settlers in the West Bank are proceeding with the so-called Gazafication of the West Bank through increased killings of Palestinians, arrests, destruction of homes and mosques, and a general campaign of terror to ethnically cleanse the population.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Jewish settlers and the military have killed 1,400 Palestinians. The situation has gained more visibility in the U.S. media because a Palestinian-American named Loui Ridi returned to his village of Qusra in the West Bank in mid-August to join his brother in trying to protect their family home, which was under siege by settlers, supported by the Israeli military.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, volunteer director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University. Professor Qumsiyeh lives in the occupied West Bank town of Beit Sahour, a suburb of the city of Bethlehem, where settler violence recently flared. Here he makes clear that settlers, with the collaboration of the Israeli military, are not just targeting isolated Palestinian villages, but engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign.
MAZIN QUMSIYEH: Yeah, they are in our area. There’s two settlements that were started within our town of Beit Sahour, the Shepherds’ Field. Those are in an area called Osh Ghurab and Harasha, and they plan to build their settlements in those areas. And this is part of their expansion of about 200 new colonies built on stolen Palestinian lands in the past three years. The latest numbers, the tenders that were issued for 2025 alone were over 40,000 new housing units. That is projected to bring the population of colonial Jewish settlers on stolen Palestinian land to reach close to one million settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, of course, which is part of the West Bank. But we observed since October 2023 under this most extreme right-wing, fascist government run by settlers, basically people like (Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar) Ben-Gvir and (Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel) Smotrich as part of the coalition building, they were given a green light for acceleration of settlement building.
This is even before Oct. 23 when they announced the coalition government in 2022. That’s when they started accelerating colonial settlement building in the West Bank. So in the past three or four years, the number of settlers and number of land confiscation, miles confiscated, etc. has increased dramatically.
MELINDA TUHUS: So in terms of your day-to-day life, how would you say it’s changed in the last period?
MAZIN QUMSIYEH: Well, since this government was born into office and engaged in this colonial expansion, they armed the settlers with hundreds of thousands of weapons and they told them to go ahead and do whatever they want to, take any hills, any areas they want to. So settler pogroms supported by the soldiers, of course, there’s settlers, there’s soldiers, but most times you cannot distinguish between them because the soldiers are the settlers. So they come in and take the land, ethnically cleanse people, burn people out of their houses, out of their farms, destroy olive trees and other fruiting trees in our land. The process is basically a process of methodical ethnic cleansing of the West Bank so it becomes a Jewish land if you want. This is the idea and that has been in the works since 1967 of course, but as I said, accelerated significantly as Israel elected more and more right-wing fascist governments, including the last, which is the most right-wing extremist fascist movement.
MELINDA TUHUS: Are you kind of worried or expecting the settlers to arrive at your doorstep?
MAZIN QUMSIYEH: And in terms of settler attacks, even this past week, they came into my village and used their guns. They shot at people. Thankfully, nobody was injured or killed, partly because of the presence of Combatants for Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian group that involves people who served in the Israeli military who now regret serving and are working for peace. They kind of insulated us from the settlers. The situation is, I cannot even begin to describe to you in very short sentences how horrific the situation the West Bank is. Over 60,000 Palestinians have already lost their homes. Their homes are demolished just in the past three years. The settlers took over 25,000 dunams of land. Each dunham is 1,000 square meters. So that’s a lot of land that they took from private Palestinian land ownership. And of course, as I said, the pogroms, the killings, the injuries of people, the burning of cars and houses and mosques and churches continues spitting on Christians in Jerusalem, other areas.
The Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh in the north is being besieged. This is an old Christian village. It’s being besieged and attacked by settlers today as we speak, actually. I could go on and on, but this is all symptomology of colonialism and it’s understandable. And we in the United States, you in the United States—I used to be in the United States—are very familiar with what happened to Native Americans, and so we understand how colonialism works.
For more information, visit Mazin Qumsiyeh’s website at qumsiyeh.org. To subscribe to our podcasts, email newsletters, our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack or social media, subscribe here.
