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‘This land is ours': How Israeli settlers see life in the West Bank
The leafy children's playground was idyllic, if you ignored the men with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, as well as the barbed-wire fence that stretched the length of the Israeli kibbutz.
Migdal Oz, with a population of about 500, was built almost 50 years ago on a plateau in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory that has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Like all of the hundreds of Israeli settlements in the area, its very existence is considered illegal under international law, as well as by the International Court of Justice.
The reason for the heavy security at Migdal Oz, which translates from Hebrew as Tower of Strength, is its proximity to the Palestinian village of Beit Fajjar, says Rabbi Benjy Myers, the deputy head of its emergency response team. At its closest point, Beit Fajjar is just 500 metres away from the kibbutz's metal gates, across sun-parched land dotted with rocks.
'There are a lot of people there who don't like us and the threat is credible. The nightmare scenario is that a few hundred or a few thousand of the residents of Beit Fajjar decide to march on us. If that happens, we're in a lot of trouble,' Myers said.
His concerns are not groundless. When Hamas fighters burst out of the Gaza Strip in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and abducting more than 200 in southern Israel, Migdal Oz also briefly came under attack, Myers said — before the threat was eliminated by its security team. None of its residents were hurt.
The kibbutz has also had a number of other security scares in recent years, including a car bomb exploding nearby and the murder of a teenage boy outside its gates, in what Israel said was a Hamas killing. More recently, Iranian ballistic missiles hurtled over Migdal Oz on their way to Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, sending its residents rushing to bomb shelters.
Yet Myers, a father of six from Bradford, Yorkshire, who has been living in the kibbutz with his wife since 2011, rejected suggestions that it would make sense to move his family to a safer region, rather than make them spend their playtimes under the watchful gaze of men with guns.
'On a personal and a practical level, maybe. But on a national level, I have a responsibility for the continuity of the Jewish people. We are here because we belong here. Why should the Jewish people leave Judea?' he said, using the Israeli term for the areas of the West Bank south of Jerusalem. He pointed out a rocky hill where Abraham is said by locals to have been ordered by God to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, as a test of his faith.
'Is God happy that I'm here? As far as I can understand, yes. We're very much in a place where we are in the footsteps of our forefathers. That makes me feel pride and responsibility,' he added.
'I believe ideologically that the Jewish people should stick to their land. I know I have a right to live on this land, and I know that this place is the best place for me as a Jewish person to live. And that it is the right thing to do,' he said.
Ministers vow to annex the Gaza Strip and West Bank
The religious and political convictions voiced by residents of Migdal Oz are at the heart of what is driving Israel's latest round of expansion across the West Bank, as well as a surge in deadly violence against Palestinians.
Israeli troops and extremist settlers have killed more than 950 Palestinians, among them 200 children, in the West Bank since October 2023, according to the United Nations. The killings go unpunished in the vast majority of cases. About 40 Israelis have been killed in the same period, government officials say.
Last July, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, approved the distribution of 120,000 firearms to settlers. He also said that Palestinian prisoners 'should be shot in the head' rather than fed. Israel says its soldiers are stationed in the West Bank to keep the peace between Jewish and Palestinian residents, as well as to thwart terrorist attacks.
Israel has been building on Palestinian land for decades, yet its government has never been so open about the scope of its ambitions. On the eve of the war with Iran, government ministers including Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister who also holds a senior post in the defence ministry, vowed at an ultra-nationalist conference to annex the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Like President Trump, Smotrich, who has said 'there is no such thing as the Palestinian people', has also called for the removal of Gazans from their territory, an idea likened by organisations such as Human Rights Watch to ethnic cleansing. So far, 56,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces since 2023 in the strip, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The conference earlier this month came as Israel approved the construction of more than 20 new settlements in the West Bank, the biggest increase for years.
Both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who are themselves settlers, were sanctioned this month by Britain for inciting 'extremist violence' against Palestinians. On Tuesday Ireland became the first European country to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a move that it said was a response to Israel's 'genocidal activity' in Gaza.
'Netanyahu is just waiting for an excuse'
On the sun-scorched streets of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian territories that are partially controlled by the Palestinian Authority, a sworn enemy of Hamas, people were wary of speaking to outsiders, especially in sight of Israeli surveillance cameras that are mounted on the walls and barbed-wire topped fences that separate the city from the nearby homes of settlers.
'We have never before witnessed such extremists in the Israeli government,' said Mohammad Abualrob, the spokesman for Mohammad Mustafa, prime minister of the state of Palestine. He also said that Israeli settlers had recently hurled stones at his car while his children were inside. 'They hide close to the checkpoints or in the hills,' he said. 'Luckily, the glass didn't break and I was able to get away and save my children.'
The increase in settler violence has sparked concerns that Netanyahu's government could seek to exploit tensions to justify a military campaign in the West Bank. 'This is a scenario that we are taking into consideration,' said a senior Palestinian security official. 'At some point, the Palestinian people might react violently. This could be a spark. We think Netanyahu is just waiting for an excuse.'
His comments were echoed by Mustafa Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian politician and the head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society charity. 'When a government makes its strategic plan the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, then what remains is how to find the opportunity and the way to do it,' he said.
Although Israel has operated checkpoints in the West Bank for decades, they reached an unprecedented level after the start of the war with Iran. About 900 iron gates now block the entrances of West Bank cities and villages, cutting off families from one another, in what Israel says is a necessary security measure. 'It has always felt like we are in prison, but now it feels like we are in a maximum-security prison,' said Ahmad, 29, who lives in Ramallah.
Israeli soldiers also stepped up raids into the West Bank after the start of the war with Iran, locals say, detaining dozens of people, frequently without charge. They have likewise increased their demolitions of Palestinian homes in the region, usually giving families just three days to pack up their lives before sending in bulldozers.
The clampdown has exacerbated a widespread sense of despair in the West Bank, where one in three people are unemployed, and hopes for an independent Palestinian state now seem like a distant memory. 'Tell the world we are dying here,' said a young man outside a café. He refused to give his name, for fear of arrest.
Back at Migdal Oz, Abigail, a former resident who now studies at its women's college, nodded when asked if she believed that Israeli Jews and Palestinians could ever live in peace with one another. 'If they know that we are strong and that we govern here, that this land is ours, then can there be peace,' she said. 'But only if the last word is ours.'
