While the world’s eyes are on Gaza, Palestinians see a land grab underway in the West Bank 

By they, Mona Saleh means the Israeli authorities.

The grieving mother-in-law said that it’s clear to her and other Palestinians in the West Bank that the Israelis are taking advantage of the fact that the world is focused on the Gaza war to redouble their efforts to “colonize” the Palestinian territory.

“They are taking advantage of the war and the current status quo,” she said.

Her family also hasn’t ventured back onto their farmland since Bilah Saleh was killed for fear of more attacks by settlers. 

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on Mona Saleh’s allegations and said that it was up to the Israeli police to investigate his death.

“When IDF soldiers come across unlawful instances involving Israelis, particularly violent acts towards Palestinians and their belongings, they must intervene to halt the violation,” the spokesperson said. “If necessary, they should apprehend or detain the suspects until the police arrive.”

When asked about the rise in Palestinian civilians killed in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which 1,200 were killed in Israel and some 240 kidnapped, the spokesperson blamed Hamas for violence in the West Bank.

There has been a “significant increase in terrorist attacks” in the West Bank, the IDF spokesperson said, with more than “2,000 attempted attacks occurring since the beginning of the war.”

But there have also been more than 1,000 attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 attack ignited the ongoing siege of Gaza, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA). 

Those attacks have displaced about 1,390 Palestinians, including 660 children, OCHA reported.

“They now have a huge excuse to do what they’ve already planned,” Sayel Kanan, the Palestinian mayor of Burqa, a West Bank town almost completely surrounded by settlements, told NBC News. 

During the past 10 months, according to the U.N., 553 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by the Israeli military and settlers. During the same time period, 15 Israelis have died. (Israeli officials have accused the U.N. of undercounting the number of Israelis killed in the West Bank.)

In all of 2023, the U.N. reported that at least 507 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, including 81 children, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians in the territory since 2008.

On Thursday, dozens of Israeli settlers, some wearing masks, attacked a Palestinian village in the West Bank, burning cars and killing at least one person, authorities said.

In Gaza, 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war on Oct. 7, according to the enclave’s health officials.

Saleh was a beloved figure in his community and hundreds of mourners took part in his funeral procession through Ramallah, where he sold the olives, figs and prickly pears that he grew on his land, as well as the sumac, sage and other herbs he collected from the hillsides over which the Israeli settlements loom. 

Mona Saleh said that, even before her son-in-law was killed, he and other Palestinian farmers had to contend with armed Israeli settlers harassing and threatening them. She said that they stole the farmer’s ladders and destroyed their crops and that the Israeli army did nothing to stop them.

“Every day that passes, our yearning for him increases,” Mona Saleh said.

Yehuda HaKohen, a New Yorker and rabbi who moved to the West Bank two decades ago and who posts videos on YouTube of himself discussing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, said he condemns violence against Palestinians.

But in his interview, HaKohen said that planting Jewish settlements in the West Bank is part of the settlers’ strategy to “retake possession” of what they consider their ancestral land, which they call Judea.

“The only method of resistance is to create as many Jewish communities as we can to make removing us logistically impossible,” said HaKohen, a father of eight who lives on a settlement called Beit-El.

“It is essentially a suburb of Jerusalem,” he said.

While the international community does not recognize the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and has condemned the seizure of Palestinians’ land, HaKohen said Jewish settlers see this land as theirs for the taking. And they will continue taking it.

“We see ourselves as part of a proud nation, ancient nation that was displaced from this land unjustly by the Romans,” he said. “We have to retake possession of our land.”

HaKohen said he, personally, has no problem having Palestinians as neighbors. But the Palestinians also have to accept that “we are not going anywhere,” he said, adding that he has not witnessed any acts of settler violence himself against Palestinians.

Last month, the top court of the United Nations ruled that Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank was “illegal” and demanded that it end “as rapidly as possible.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the court ruling as “a decision of lies.”

On a tour of Kanan’s dusty desert town of some 4,000 people, where residents who say their homes were stoned by settlers have installed metal guards on the windows. Kanan said the number of settler attacks have risen significantly since Oct. 7.

Burqa is almost completely ringed by illegal Israeli settlements that Kanan said have sprung up in recent years. The main route out of Burqa, he said, has been blocked for years by a concrete barrier the settlers trucked in, forcing the Palestinians to take unpaved roads to get to nearby cities like Ramallah.

So what should be a quick seven-minute drive is a nearly hour-long trek, Kanan said.

“If you try to get around the barrier, they will kill you,” Kanan said of the settlers.

The Israeli army is enabling the settler takeover of Palestinian land in the West Bank by refusing to rein-in the settlers, the mayor said.

“There’s no consequences for this,” Kanan said as he drove through the main intersection in the village, which has a “We (heart) Burqa” sign below a tattered Palestinian flag.

When the army comes, “they come here to protect the settlers,” Kanan said, repeating an accusation many Palestinians make about the Israeli military.

“They actually make things worse,” Kanan said.