A cry for help in the face of ethnic cleansing

JVL Introduction

We have often carried reports from The Villages Group about settler violence and wilful destruction of Palestinian installations in the West Bank.

In recent months the level of assault by settlers, emboldened by fascists in the government, has been rising.

You can find Ehud Krinis and Erella Dunayevsky’s assessment of the situation in C Area of the West-Bank published in July here.

Now, while the world’s eyes are on Gaza, ethnic cleansing is taking place at a rapid pace in the West Bank.

This is a desperate plea for help from those who have been working for decades to build solidarity with Palestinian villagers on the West Bank.

Here is the latest newsletter from The Villages Group.

“One by one, these villages are falling.”

14th October 2023

Dear friends and whoever else is listening!

We are writing this with very heavy hearts and an acute sense of mourning and loss, exactly a week since the terrible terrorist attack perpetrated by the Hamas started on October 7. So many innocent lives lost, wounded, still missing, or held hostages. We know some of them personally. This violence must stop, as must the brutal and indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza, where millions innocents are bombed and trapped without shelter and basic needs. Please write, shout, and raise your voices to help bring this nightmare to an end before it gets much worse.

Indeed, there is more bad news from elsewhere that you must also know.

There is now a wave of desperate calls for help from many Palestinian communities all over the West Bank. These communities have for the past years suffered increased harassment from armed gangs, based in the settler outposts, who with violence, threats, and constant acts of theft, especially of land, have made life for Palestinians unbearable. A few communities have already been forced to abandon their homes and escape to safety.

Since October 7, the settlers, with the complete support of the army and police, have been on a violent rampage, shooting innocent Palestinians point blank (as in the village of a-Tuwani and Qusra), invading their homes, beating up men, women, and children, destroying property, and so on. The trickle of evacuations is becoming a flood (Al Qanoob, Wad-i-Sik, families from Al-Mhabas and Samra, are just a few examples from the last 4 days). We are facing an acute danger of vast proportions—an irreversible disaster. Once the Palestinian families leave, the settlers are quick to arrive and raze the village to the ground. The eyes of the world are turned elsewhere–perhaps understandably so, given the unbelievable civilian death toll on both sides of the Gaza border–but by the time the world turns its gaze back to what is happening in Area C, it may well be too late.

So when you call upon your leaders to stop the attacks on civilians and immediately release the hostages, please tell them to also heed these calls for help and demand that the Israeli government stop settler attacks in the West Bank immediately. Only strong international intervention can possibly halt the tide of violent expulsion.

An addendum to the message above

As of this morning: Ein al-Rashash, a place close to our hearts, home to friends of many years, a village of infinite beauty, is in the process of evacuation-expulsion. They will be gone in two or three days. Wadi a-Siq, the place described in our last post before the war, is already gone, after a savage attack on Thursday by armed settlers and police. One by one, these villages are falling. You can imagine what we are feeling. We will continue to do whatever we can to protect the Palestinians in South Hebron and the Jordan Valley.

With hope for better times,

David Shulman and Yigal Bronner