This story is a part of an NPR series reflecting on Oct. 7, a year of war and how it has changed life across Israel, the Gaza Strip, the region and the world.
AL-MU’ARRAJAT, West Bank — In a sun-filled classroom for elementary-aged students, decorations and posters showing the Arabic alphabet have been ripped from the walls, chairs toppled, papers and documents from a filing cabinet crumpled and strewn across the floor. The door to the classroom is tied with rope; its handle lies nearby, bashed and warped after the door was kicked in a day earlier.
A group of extremist Israeli settlers stormed the small primary school last month while it was in session.
In a video filmed that September day by an Israeli human rights activist, the settlers are seen wielding wooden bats and charging through the schoolyard. They beat a young teacher, attack the activist who’s filming and try to break into locked classrooms where students were sheltering.
“The teacher told us all to come and hold the door shut so they can’t break in,” remembers nine-year-old Obeida Mleihat. He peeks into the classroom he was sheltering in, and points to a fan in the corner.
“I was standing over there,” he says. “I was scared.”
In the year since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel last Oct. 7 – which Israel says killed around 1,200 people and sparked the current war in Gaza, which has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians – violence by Israeli settlers and the Israeli military has also erupted against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
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Near-nightly military raids take place in many cities. Israel says these are part of counterterrorism efforts against Hamas and other militant groups that have stepped up attacks against Israelis. The military raids have become longer, more frequent, more deadly and more destructive than in the past. According to the United Nations, at least 698 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023. Outside urban areas, settlers have increased threatening attacks on rural Palestinian communities, aiming to push them from their land.
Obeida’s dad, Suliman Mleihat, is the head of this rural Palestinian Bedouin community, tucked into the rolling hills of the Jordan Valley. He rushed to the school when he heard the attack was happening — both his young children were there. He says the Israeli military showed up and blocked him and other parents from entering, but also didn’t stop the settlers. (The Israeli military did not directly comment on this incident in response to an NPR request.)
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“My children are my soul, so it was incredibly difficult to not be able to get to them, to not know if they were okay,” Mleihat says. When he did finally get to them, he hugged them both very tightly.
Mleihat says he recognized this group of settlers. They’d attacked the community before – poisoning sheep and hurting people.
“But coming to the school, and threatening children, this is new,” he says. “This crossed a major line.”
Mleihat says that the settlers are trying to get them all to leave, to evict the Bedouin community. And he says it’s a real possibility, if attacks like this continue. But where would they go?
Attacks are orchestrated to force Palestinians off their land
Allegra Pacheco is an American attorney who heads the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of international nonprofits focused on protecting Palestinians in the West Bank from forced displacement and attacks.
“Settler violence isn’t just about a group of young guys on a hilltop anymore,” she says, invoking a common stereotype.
Pacheco has been working in the West Bank for decades. She says before last Oct. 7, most Israelis living in settlements in the West Bank — all of which are illegal under international law, though not necessarily under Israeli law — were relatively unconcerned with nearby Palestinians as long as they didn’t interfere with settler life.
“Now we’re seeing much more rhetoric that ‘Palestinians are the enemies,’ that they’re legitimate targets,” says Pacheco. “And that, of course, transfers into the violence that we’re seeing.”
Attacks by settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank skyrocketed after last Oct. 7. The United Nations has documented nearly 1,400 attacks – not including harassment or threats – in the past year. The years 2023 and 2024 so far have had the highest number of incidents since the organization began collecting data nearly 20 years ago.
The attacks are often orchestrated to intimidate Palestinians into leaving their land – Pacheco says about 17 communities have been forcefully displaced this way in the past year alone.
“Once the Palestinians are chased out of these areas, the settlements move in and make it much harder to give back the land to the Palestinians,” says Pacheco.
That is the goal.
The Yesha Council, the Israeli umbrella organization for all the settlements in the West Bank, has it listed on its website in English: “To prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.” And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government – with ultranationalist lawmakers in major positions of power overseeing the West Bank – encourages the expansion of illegal settlements, and instructs the Israeli police and military to protect them.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank have become so disruptive that the International Court of Justice ruled this year that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal – calling on Israel to cease its presence in the occupied territories, including dismantling Israel settlements there and paying reparations to Palestinians for damages caused from the occupation.
Meanwhile, world leaders, including President Biden in his 2024 State of the Union address, are still pushing for a two-state solution.
Fears that the West Bank will become the next Gaza
In late August, the Israeli military launched one of its most extensive and deadliest raids in the West Bank in years, centered on the Jenin urban refugee camp, home to about 24,000 residents. The raid lasted 10 days and killed 39 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials. Three Israeli police officers were also killed, according to the Israeli military.
The Israeli military left much of Jenin in ruins. Jenin Mayor Nidal Abu Saleh says at least 70% of the city was destroyed in the raid.
Driving through Jenin weeks later, the damage is still clearly visible. The streets have been ripped up and there are giant potholes from explosions. Much of the infrastructure is damaged, too – water and sewage flow through the streets and power lines are ripped down.
The Israeli military says operations like this are necessary for counterterrorism. Jenin and other cities in the West Bank have long been militant strongholds, which have grown more active since last Oct. 7.
As schoolchildren carrying backpacks try to navigate the piles of rubble and debris in the streets, community leader Farha Abu Hejah observes that the violence has been especially difficult for them.
“The children have a hard time getting to school because of the rocks and the holes in the road,” she says. “And the raids are terrifying. The children are in panic. Families are in total panic. It really impacts everyone’s psychological state.”
Abu Hejah grew up in Jenin, and has lived there all her life. She says the Israeli military has been targeting the refugee camp for many years, but never like this. Now, “It’s a complete destruction of life and infrastructure. It looks like Gaza,” she says. “Jenin is Gaza, but in the West Bank.”
Khalil Shikaki, a political scientist and pollster in Ramallah, says his recent polls have show that Palestinians in the West Bank are feeling increasingly unsafe, unprotected by their own leaders and at the mercy of Israeli troops and even airstrikes – which were rare in the West Bank for the past two decades but have become regular in the past year.
“These last few months have essentially brought in tremendous fears that the destruction in Gaza is going to happen in the West Bank as well,” Shikaki says. “There is a significant rise in the perception of West Bankers that Gaza is coming to them.”
Family homes are destroyed
Near the center of the Jenin refugee camp, through a small courtyard off a ripped-up street, is the Abu Ali family home — where 26 family members, including eight children, once lived spread over three floors.
Now, the main floor apartment is charred and covered in debris. A melted and warped ceiling fan hangs overhead in the living room, a crumpled refrigerator sits in what was once a kitchen. The back wall is blasted with a giant gaping hole.
The family matriarch, Raeda Abu Ali, says Israeli soldiers arrived in the night and ordered everyone out of the house. They carried a gas canister into the back room.
“They told us to count to three, and you’ll hear your home explode,” she remembers. “That was a terrible moment, when I listened to my house blow up.”
A burned metal gas container still sits in the middle of the floor.
Abu Ali says the soldiers gave no reason for why they blew up the house. No one in her family is affiliated with any militant groups, she says.
The Israeli military told NPR that it was not aware of this specific incident, but added that “during the operation in Jenin, laboratories in a civilian area that were used by terrorists to prepare explosives were dismantled.”
She says they hope to rebuild, although she worries their home could be destroyed again. When asked if she can file a complaint, Abu Ali almost laughs.
“Who will listen to us? There’s no side that I can address this complaint to,” she says. “Look at Gaza. Look at the destruction. Who’s listening to them? Why would someone listen to us?”
As she speaks, her sister-in-law Samira Abu Ali begins weeding the front garden. Raeda’s three-year-old grandson plays nearby.
Samira says the plants were blown across the courtyard in the explosion, but she picked them up and replanted them.
She points to a small red flower on one of them, and smiles. Even after all that, she says, it bloomed.
Nuha Musleh contributed to this report from the West Bank. Itay Stern contributed from Tel Aviv.
Transcript:
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
We’ve been looking this week at how people’s lives in the Middle East have been upended in the year since the war in Gaza began. Today, we turn to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli violence against Palestinians there has erupted both from settlers and the military. NPR’s Kat Lonsdorf reports. And a warning – some of what you’re about to hear is disturbing.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: This is one of the youngest classes at a primary school in Mu’arrajat, a rural Palestinian Bedouin community tucked into the rolling hills of the Jordan Valley near Jericho.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: On this day, the littlest ones are learning to count. But just a few days ago, the scene here was much, much different. When extremist Israeli settlers stormed the school, while it was in session, they wielded wooden bats and tried to break into locked classrooms where students were sheltering. In this video filmed that day by an Israeli human rights activist, you can see the Israeli settlers beat a young teacher and attack the activists who’s filming.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Shouting).
LONSDORF: Nine-year-old Obeida Mleihat was there the day of the attack. NPR visited the next morning, and he showed us where he hid in his classroom.
OBEIDA MLEIHAT: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: Behind a fan in the corner, away from the door, he says. It was scary, he says.
SULEMAN MLEIHAT: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: Obeida’s dad, Suleman Mleihat, is head of the community. He says he rushed to the school when he heard the attack was happening. He had two young kids there. He says the Israeli military showed up and blocked him and other parents from entering, but also didn’t stop the settlers.
S MLEIHAT: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: My children are my soul, he says. So it was incredibly difficult to not know if they were OK. When he finally did get to them, he says he hugged them very tight. Suleman says he recognized this group of settlers. They’ve attacked the community before, poisoning sheep and hurting people. This, coming to the school, threatening children – this is new. They’re trying to get us to leave, he says, to evict us. He says it might happen if attacks like this continue.
ALLEGRA PACHECO: Settler violence isn’t about a group of young guys on a hilltop anymore.
LONSDORF: Allegra Pacheco is an American attorney who heads the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of international NGOs focused on protecting the most vulnerable Palestinian communities in the West Bank from forced displacement and attacks. Pacheco has been working in the West Bank for decades. She says before October 7, most Israelis living in settlements in the West Bank, all of which are illegal under international law, were relatively unconcerned with nearby Palestinians as long as they didn’t interfere with settler life.
PACHECO: Now we’re seeing much more rhetoric. Palestinians are the enemies, that they’re legitimate targets.
LONSDORF: Rhetoric that has become mainstream.
PACHECO: And then that, of course, transfers into the violence that we’re seeing.
LONSDORF: Attacks by settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank skyrocketed after October 7. The U.N. documented nearly 1,400 attacks which don’t include harassment or threats in the past year, the highest number since the organization began collecting data nearly 20 years ago. The attacks are often orchestrated to intimidate Palestinians into leaving their land. Pacheco says about 17 communities have been forcefully displaced this way in the past year.
PACHECO: Once the Palestinians are chased out of these areas, the settlements move in and make it much harder to give back the land to the Palestinians.
LONSDORF: That is the goal. The Yesha Council, the Israeli umbrella organization for all the settlements in the West Bank, has it listed on its website in English – quote, “to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, with ultra-nationalist lawmakers in major positions of power overseeing the West Bank, encourages the expansion of illegal settlements and instructs the Israeli police and military to protect them. Meanwhile…
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The only real solution to the situation is a two-state solution over time.
LONSDORF: …World leaders like President Biden in his State of the Union address earlier this year are still pushing for a two-state solution. In the more heavily populated areas of the West Bank, violence has also upended Palestinian life in the form of longer, more destructive, and more deadly raids by the Israeli military, which have killed at least 678 Palestinians since October 7, according to the U.N. This is Jenin. In late August, the Israeli military launched one of its most extensive and deadliest raids in the West Bank in years. Jenin was the epicenter.
FARHA ABU HEJAH: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: Farha Abu Hejah is a community leader here. She points out all the damage done by the Israeli military in this recent operation, which lasted 10 days and killed 28 people.
ABU HEJAH: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: The streets have been ripped up – giant potholes from explosions. Much of the infrastructure was damaged too. Water and sewage flow through the streets, and power lines are ripped down. The Israeli military says operations like this are necessary for counter-terrorism. Jenin and other cities in the West Bank have long been militant strongholds, which have also grown more active since October 7. We get out of the car and Farha shows us through the streets. It’s much worse here than before, she says, a complete destruction of life and infrastructure. Looks like Gaza, she says. Jenin is Gaza, but in the West Bank.
KHALIL SHIKAKI: This last three months have essentially brought in, I would say, tremendous fears that the destruction in Gaza is going to happen in the West Bank, as well.
LONSDORF: Khalil Shikaki is a political scientist and pollster in Ramallah. He says Palestinians in the West Bank are feeling increasingly unsafe, unprotected, and at the mercy of Israeli troops and even air strikes, which have restarted in the West Bank after many, many years.
SHIKAKI: And this has led to a significant rise in the perception of West Bankers that Gaza is coming to them.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUBBLE CLANKING)
LONSDORF: Farha brings us to the Abu Ali family home, where 26 members of the extended family were living, including eight children, spread over three floors. Now the main floor apartment is charred, completely black, covered in debris. The back wall is blasted with a giant gaping hole. The matriarch of the family, Raeda, says that Israeli soldiers arrived in the night and ordered everyone out of the house. They carried a gas canister into the back room.
RAEDA: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: They told them, count to three, and you’ll hear it explode. The children all covered their ears. That was a terrible moment she says, listening to her home blow up. She says the soldiers gave no reason for why they blew up the house. No one in her family is affiliated with any militant groups, she says. The Israeli military told NPR that it was not aware of this specific incident.
RAEDA: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: Raeda says they hope to rebuild, although she worries their home could be destroyed again. As Raeda speaks, her sister-in-law Samira begins weeding the front garden. Her 3-year-old son plays at her feet. Samira says these plants were blown across the courtyard in the explosion, but she picked them up and replanted them. She points to a small red flower and smiles. Look, she says. Even after all that, they bloom.
Kat Lonsdorf, NPR News, Jenin.