In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, shepherds and settlers are pushing out locals

Australia Broadcast Center

3 days ago

It is early morning in the Jordan Valley in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and a teenage boy has herded a flock of sheep next to a Palestinian family's house and farm.
The boy is a Jewish settler, part of a group that has built a so-called outpost — a small cluster of buildings erected without permission from the Israeli government — a few hundred metres away.
WARNING: This article contains an image some readers may find confronting.
He may just look like a teenager with a flock of sheep. But what is happening in this Palestinian village is far more sinister, said Oded Paporisch, an Israeli peace activist staying in the village to help protect residents from settlers.
"He brings these sheep to herd in here, maybe 20 metres from a Palestinian house … to try to terrorise them," he said.
Activists say "shepherd settlers" are using farming as a pretext to intimidate Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, alongside a surge in violence they say is intended to seize more land for Israelis.
Mr Paporisch, from the activist group Looking the Occupation in the Eye, described it as a form of "terrorism".
The head of Israel's domestic security agencies has also used the word "terrorism" to describe the actions of extremist settlers who have established bases on Palestinian farmland and attacked residents.
Salama Kaabneh, a Palestinian farmer who lives in Al Auja with his family, told the ABC that this was part of regular harassment from the settlers.
"Every day he [the settler teenager] comes here to our water, [the] feed of our sheep — and he destroys it," he said.
"He empties water, every day he makes problems, and we cannot go out."
Mr Kaabneh said the settlers' sheep were also used to block his own from leaving their pen.
"They are not allowed to eat, they cannot graze, and he [the settler teenager] does whatever he wants and roams freely," he said.
The boy was unnerved by our presence, and that of a French film crew, and called a so-called "security officer" from a nearby Jewish settlement to come.
This security officer arrived armed with an automatic rifle and laughed off any suggestion that the sheep were being used to intimidate local residents.
The Palestinians hid in their homes and stopped our interview when he arrived.
"We feel besieged and psychologically exhausted," Mr Kaabneh said.
Neither the security officer nor the boy, who was joined by a friend from the outpost, wanted to answer questions.
The local Israeli council, which is responsible for settlements in this area, did not respond to allegations that settlers were harassing and attacking Palestinians and damaging their property.
The self-professed goal of the settlement movement is to "change the facts on the ground", taking and controlling more land in order to claim the West Bank, recognised internationally as Palestinian, as part of Israel.
Many of the settler teenagers are "at-risk" youth, who may have dropped out of school and are now partially supported by the state.
"This kid is maybe from a broken family, and they [settlers] take him to the outpost … and they help him, as strange as it sounds, to rehabilitate him," Mr Paporisch said.
"The Israeli authorities, they don't care. We filed a complaint many, many times, and they just don't care about it."
Palestinian villagers have also accused settlers from these "herding outposts" of stealing livestock and feed and damaging farm buildings.
On occasion, the settlers have also accused Palestinians of stealing sheep.
But often the problems can be much more serious.
Palestinians and human rights monitors said settlers — usually large groups of young men — have been attacking Palestinians directly.
Mr Kaabneh said the settlers often harassed the villagers.
"Filming us and coming back at night … shooting, opening fire. Throwing stones on the residents, on the shacks, causing lots of problems here," he said.
Longtime peace activist Arik Ascherman, an American-Israeli rabbi who leads the group Torah Tzedek (the Torah of Justice), was recently injured during an attack by settlers on the village of Mikhmas, about 20 kilometres from Al Auja.
"I have two fractures in my neck. You can see my whole head is stapled together, I've got some other injuries here and there," he said, showing the ABC bruises on his legs and metal staples on his scalp.
"When the Palestinians wanted to comfort me when I got here, I said, 'thank you, but, of course, you get much worse.'"
The Israeli military said in a statement that the incident began when Palestinians threw stones at a Jewish shepherd, then groups of settlers and Palestinians began throwing rocks and assaulting each other.
Palestinians in the village told the ABC the settlers had started the confrontation and threatened families who were playing in a playground on the edge of the village.
"They attacked the cars, they burnt them, and of course the [Israeli] army came, the army helped them and stood by them, and went with them until the beginning of the town," Daher, a local villager, said.
"They tried to do a lot of chaos. They had a lot of guns, they were masked, with clubs, and even one of the peace activists was beaten."
The peace activists and Palestinians said the shepherd settlers frequently attacked villages without provocation, destroying buildings and cars and injuring anyone who tried to stop them.
Arik Ascherman said the attacks had become more frequent and more dangerous since the October 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
"That has allowed the settler movement to take advantage of the pain and anger and fear that all Israelis across the political spectrum are feeling, to do what they planned years ago, maybe even decades," he said. "But now, there's nothing stopping them."
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it had documented 759 settler attacks in 2025 alone.
OCHA said there were an average of four incidents per day, with 492 Palestinians injured by either settlers or Israeli forces this year.
The office said 95 Palestinians were injured by settlers in June alone, the highest monthly total ever recorded.
The United Nations said attacks got worse in July, with 27 recorded in one week alone.
Three Palestinians were allegedly killed by settlers in the West Bank in July, including one, an American citizen, who was beaten to death.
Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, but the Israeli government considers many of the established towns and villages to now be part of the state of Israel.
Both the number of settlements and the number of outposts, which are considered illegal even under Israeli law, have increased.
In May, Israel announced a major expansion of settlements in the West Bank, including legalising some outposts that were built without government authorisation.
All up, 22 new Jewish settlements were approved, marking the largest expansion in decades.
Mr Ascherman said the international community had done almost nothing to stop Israel from seizing more Palestinian land via settlements in the West Bank.
"They [the settlers] know that no one is going to do anything to them," he said.
"We are far, far from the kind of pressure on Israel that would actually get them to start removing the outposts.
"The outposts … destroy any possibility of a two-state solution, because they are popping up everywhere."