Palestinians in the West Bank face violence from settlers daily, the demolition of their homes, the illegal occupation of land, and the corruption of military courts.
That’s according to Cole Yeoman, a journalist from Ōtautahi, who spent two months of this year travelling through the West Bank documenting the reality.
The killing of 41,000 Palestinians (Palestinian health authority numbers) on the Gaza Strip (or 186,000 according to the Lancet) is often attributed by supporters of Israel to be self-defence in response to Hamas’ attack last October 7. But Palestine advocates said the oppression of Palestinians had gone on for decades and this didn’t start on October 7.
Yeoman said the reality of the West Bank gave context to what he called “genocide” in Gaza and gave insight to what had been happening in Palestinian territories for decades.
While the world had been focused on Gaza, Yeoman said everything had escalated in the West Bank. There had been more settler attacks, more house demolitions, settlement expansion and soldier incursions into Palestinian villages.
“When you see what is happening in the West Bank, you see that what’s happening in Gaza is very much part of an intentional system of ethnic cleansing, abuse, and forcing Palestinians out of their homes and off the land that they have been in for generations, the land that they have farmed and cared for, and the land that they are a part of, the land that they’re indigenous to,” Yeoman said.
Illegal occupation of Palestinian territories
In July, the International Court of Justice ruled there were illegally occupied Palestinian territories on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and that all states should act to end such occupations. And last week 124 countries voted for a resolution at the UN General Assembly to end the unlawful occupation.
Yeoman spent time in what is considered Palestinian territories in East Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Hebron in the West Bank.
He said every day Palestinians faced harassment by settlers and incursions in their villages (sudden invasions or attacks) by the military. There were dangerous acts of terror, people who had been shot, beaten and killed, and they were unable to defend themselves because the forces were on the side of the settlers.
Although, illegal under international law, if Palestinians defended their land they were assaulted, killed or detained under “secret evidence.”
Settlements start as caravan outposts
Masafer Yatta is a small group of 18 or 19 villages in the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank.
Among the villages are illegal Israeli settlements, which Yeoman said are intentionally built to prevent movement between villages and cut Palestinian farmers off their land.
Te Ao Māori News asked Yeoman about the settlers. He said the settlers were Israeli civilians who were protected by the Israeli military.
A settlement might start off with a settler deciding to live in a caravan on a hillside to mark the territory. One day Yeoman took a donkey from the village of Tawani to Um Al Khair and all along the route he saw caravans and house trucks, the beginning of settlements.
Yeoman said that was a way for Israeli civilians to say, “this is our land now”.
Despite these setups being illegal, even under Israeli law, the government did nothing about them and the Israeli military and the West Bank were mandated to protect Israeli citizens. Once they were there long enough or had established a big enough community it was signed off as an official outpost.
If it became an official outpost, and a Palestinian farm was, say, 10 metres away, the farm was considered a security risk for the Israeli citizens and there was a risk the Palestinians would be forced off their land or a fence would be built, which restricted their movement.
Settlements then become collections of container houses, which is what they initially build until they expand out.
When the settlers take the hilltops it also cut off freedom of movement between villages, and a three-minute walk across a hill could turn into a 15-minute drive around.
The settlements can be close to Palestinian villages. For example,at some points the fence of Carmel settlement is only six feet from buildings of Um Al Khair.
He said the settlers made the Palestinian’s lives a “living hell” to drive them off the land so they could expand. Examples included army reservists who wore their uniforms off-duty, abusing the power of the Israeli military; walking into people’s homes and demanding they make them tea.
He said there was absolute impunity because if Palestinians did anything to resist the illegal land occupation, or confront settlers for being on the land they had documents to prove is theirs, they risked being attacked or detained in false accusations of violence or terrorism.
State-backed house demolitions
Palestinian home demolitions are backed by the Israeli state and carried out by the military and police force, which Yeoman said was the most shocking thing he witnessed.
His group had heard houses were being demolished in Um Al Khair village in Massafer Yatta and travelled in a group out to the village.
In a demolition the families were barred from entering their homes and there was a line of soldiers to stop anyone from entering.
When they arrived in Um Al Khair, the road was blocked by military vehicles and so they ended up walking across the valley. As they came over the top of the hill they could hear a wave of noise, “this chorus” of children screaming and crying and old women shrieking, men yelling from the village.
“All they can do is sit there and watch from behind this line of soldiers as the bulldozers just ram into their houses again and again,” he said.
“There was no humanity. The [Israeli] soldiers just stood there, some of them even on their phones just completely unaware that they were destroying people’s homes and memories.”
On that day, Yeoman said, there were 11 homes demolished and 38 people who were left homeless in the middle of summer which had 37-38°C days, with no shelter, no shade, and no air conditioning.
“And there is nothing they can do,” Yeoman said. “If they try to resist, they get detained by the military or they get beaten.”
He returned to Um Al Khair weeks later and the rubble remained. He said he stood there with a man who picked through the rubble of his house. The man found pieces of his kitchen, pieces of his daughter’s clothing from her wardrobe, and her unfinished homework.
“Staple pieces of life and existence in this home that they had been in for generations,” Yeoman said.
The unchecked violence Palestinians face
One man Yeoman met was shot with an illegal explosive ammunition from two metres away, last November. The man survived after 80 hours in the ICU, but still had to wear pressure bandages and live with remnants of the bullet in his body.
The attack completely changed his life. Before he was shot he was roaming hillsides, working as a builder, and helping out the local community. Now he can’t travel long distances and he can’t pick up and hold his children.
The settler who did this was caught on video but was free to walk. When the man tried to lodge a complaint he was detained for allegedly throwing rocks - the supposed reason he was shot. However, the video which circulated online, proved otherwise.
Still, he was detained and his family had to pay a 10,000 shekel fine (NZ$4,200)to have him released.
The uncertain risk of detainment
Yeoman said the Palestinians had to avoid being detained for defending themselves or their land because the outcome was uncertain.
Sometimes they were lucky if they were detained for a few hours or overnight but generally it was a long process.
There was a possibility they were placed in administrative detention, under which the military could detain them for four to six months without charge and without a trial on a base of “secret evidence”.
There were 3500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons under this administrative detention.
Yeoman visited Ofer Military prison through Military Court Watch, an organisation that reports on children who are being put through the military court system.
The courts are the size of shipping containers, with a judge, a prosecutor and one family member permitted. The prisoner appears on a screen with an Israeli flag strung behind them.
Family may not recognise their loved one because of the conditions they’re subject to in the prisons. The prisoners are often unable to shower, aren’t given changes of clothes, stay in overcrowded rooms (12 people in an eight-person room) with open toilets, or a “dirty cloth for privacy”, essentially having to go to the toilet in front of a large group.
He said there was no justice because the trials were five minutes long on average, and most were adjourned till a later date.
Under secret evidence, Yeoman said there was no legal pathway out even with the best lawyer, so the fastest way out was pleading guilty even if innocent.
He said most arrests happened in early hours - from 3am to 4am. Sometimes hydraulic jacks were used to quietly open the door and Palestinians might wake to soldiers surrounding their bed.
He said it was so unnecessary to wake a 12-year-old child to arrest them while their family slept, and it made them unable to sleep.
“It’s very much a system of putting terror and uncertainty into people’s lives,” he said.
“They are resilient and they keep pushing on because it’s their homes but really they feel they can do very little when the whole system is rigged against them like that.”
The urgent need to uphold international law
Yeoman said there are no measures to hold the Israeli State to account for breaches of international laws, and the Israeli government wasn’t holding its settlers to account for their behaviour either.
Yeoman believed international governments had to sanction Israel or else it was only going to keep getting worse. He said there was an urgent need for international law to be upheld and applied consistently in the same way that it had been in Ukraine.