Israeli settler activity increases in the West Bank

0:00This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, another progressive Democrat edges out an establishment candidate. Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's Senate primary, campaigning on affordability, health care and ending U.S. military aid to Israel. Join us as we break down his victory and what it could signal for November's midterms on the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts. Today on State of the World, Israeli settler activity increases in the West Bank.

0:33You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. The West Bank is a Palestinian territory between Israel and Jordan that Israel's military has occupied since 1967. And for decades, Israeli Jewish settlers have been building settlements there, taking more and more of the West Bank away from Palestinians. This has the support of Israel's far-right government, which faces a possible loss of power in an October election. And that's led to a frenzy of settlement activity. The government has legalized past settlements under Israeli law and approved new ones in areas that are supposed to be under Palestinian civil control.

1:20NPR's Emily Feng takes us to the West Bank to meet Palestinian residents who say they feel like they're being encircled by settlers trying to take their land, sometimes violently. We meet Luay Adele building a cinder block wall around his house. He said he went into debt to build it.

1:44But I need the wall to protect my family from settlers and from the Israeli army, he says. From their house, they look directly across a small valley to the next hill, where Jewish settlers have built the outpost of Eviatar, which was recently legalized by the Israeli government. Living next to Eviatar is like living on the front lines of a war, his wife Najat says.

2:08Because, she says, there's no security. Every few days, she says she discovers a vegetable garden ripped up or a tree chopped down. The settlers come and destroy everything, she says. This brutal test of opposing wills, settler versus Palestinian, has literally changed the landscape here in the Palestinian town of Beita. The village is in what is known as Area B. Land under Palestinian civil administration, but Israel's security control.

2:43Ahmed Dwaykat, another resident, reminisces when the hills here were covered with olive trees and plants that were green and flowering.

2:54But now there's nothing here, he says. The fields around us are yellow with weeds and barren, abandoned by the two Palestinian families who simply moved away under pressure from Evyatar settlers. Dwaycott points out a chain of four settlements on the ridge surrounding his town, all expanding since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, forming a chain of Israeli communities that rings Beita. And that is paralyzing the local economy. Here in this local market, rotting melon rinds and cardboard boxes are underfoot because an Israeli settlement cut off the market's access to the local dump. And Serhan Ali Kanan, a wholesaler here, says more and more of the produce has to be imported from Israel because...

3:47The settlers forbid us to plant. They cut off our water and they destroy our greenhouses, he says. The Israeli military says the number of what they call nationalistic crime incidents, their term for settler violence, rose to 120 in 2025, an increase of about 45 percent from 2024. The Israeli military, police and intelligence say they've started a joint task force to combat this violence. But in July, 600 retired Israeli security officials signed a letter pleading for U.S. President Trump to further pressure Israel's leaders to end what they called settler terror in the West Bank. The letter came after a deadly July clash between settlers and Palestinians and after arsonists in the West Bank village of Kusra, also in Area B, partially burned down a mosque.

4:37Israel's military condemned this act and said it was investigating. And I can smell the burnt mosque even before I see it. But Mohammed Al-Khaj Ahmed says the incident is part of a pattern. Using a soot-stained hand, he points to three Israeli settlements in view through one of the mosque windows. And explains how he used to sneak food and water to a Palestinian home some 150 yards in front of us. Some settlers set up a tent right next to the house this year, locking the family in their own home for three months. But they fled two weeks ago, Al-Haj Ahmed says, after their water and power lines were also cut by the settlers.

5:22They could not live like that anymore, he says. That's the goal of these Israeli settlers, activists such as the Israeli group Peace Now say, to push out Palestinian occupants and take de facto control of the land, thereby disrupting any possibility of a future Palestinian state. And the months before Israel's elections this October, Israel's right-wing government has approved a flurry of new and expanded settlements before a new government could potentially pause them. The rise in settler attacks has prompted many rural Palestinian communities to organize night watches. Shepard Kousai Abu Al-Kabash welcomes us outside his watch tent with coffee.

6:10He stays up until at least 3 a.m. every morning. He knows from experience that the worst attacks come after midnight. From a group of settlers so persistent and aggressive, Abu Al-Kabash knows all of them by name.

6:27The 29-year-old describes how this past March They stripped him, beat him and his family, and zip-tied his genitals, moments captured by his security cameras.

6:40But all he can think about now are the nearly 400 sheep the settlers stole, a flock accumulated over two generations in his entire extended family's fortune. His father, Ibrahim Abu Ali Kabbash, listens to his son in a daze, as if he still cannot believe the tragedy that has befallen them. He slowly unwraps his headscarf in the moonlight to show where the settlers battered him. But it's the sheep that he too is worried about. He keeps repeating, we must get them back. Down a pitted dirt road, the Basharat family are also still wide awake at midnight. Their patriarch, Yusuf Basharat, shifts positions on a makeshift mattress every few seconds from pain.

7:26After being beaten last November by settlers, he says he's dislocated something in his back. And yet, he keeps watch.

7:37The entire family takes two-hour shifts through the night every night, he explains. Beginning after settlers stole a horse from them last year.

7:49And when we see settlers, the first thing we do is we get our phones to film them. And we prepare stones to throw. says Najat Basharat, his wife, even though the settlers are often armed with guns.

8:05The hardest time is winter, she says, when the temperature drops and staying awake at night becomes desperately difficult. Seven other Palestinian families around them have already left because of the settlers.

8:22And our turn is coming, she says.

8:28But I know every tree and every stone here, she says, her voice rising. How can the settlers say they are forbidden to me? Emily Fang, NPR News, Mahool, The West Bank.

8:45That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.

8:52The midterms are coming. And if you think the news cycle feels intense now, just wait until the fall. That's why summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated. I mean, Martinez, on Up First, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in fewer than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe to Up First today wherever you get podcasts. Have you ever been so upset that you can't even think straight? When we're distressed and in high anxiety, we tend to breathe from our chest, which is actually more hyperventilating and is the opposite of relaxing.

9:27So we want to breathe from our belly area. This week on the Life Kit podcast, tips for those painful, stressful moments. Listen to Life Kit on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. The day's top headlines, local stories from your community, your next podcast binge listen. You can have it all in one place, your pocket. Download the NPR app today. Thank you.