--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Host (Noel King): Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, the eyes of the world have been on Gaza, understandably. But another front in this conflict is the West Bank, which is a kidney-bean-shaped piece of land on the West Bank of the Jordan River.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): Palestinians live in the West Bank alongside Jewish settlers, people who have pushed into the area seeking land and housing, who've built cities, and who believe they have a right to be there, even though most of the international community has condemned their settlements as illegal.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Some settlers violently attack the Palestinians living there with impunity. And since this war began, those attacks have gotten bad enough for the eyes of the world to occasionally leave Gaza and look to the West Bank. I continue to be alarmed about extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank. That pouring gasoline on fire is what it's like.
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--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): I've worked with an organization called the International Crisis Group, which is a conflict prevention organization that works in some dozens of conflict areas all over the world. And I was in charge of Israel-Palestine managing a small team in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Nathan is the author of a new book called A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, about a Palestinian father from the West Bank searching for his son who's gone missing after a bus accident. The book tells some of the history of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and illustrates why Israel faces mighty criticism for its support of settlers, not just from Palestinians, but also from some Israelis and from the international community.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): I asked Nathan to start by telling us what the West Bank looks like and who lives there.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): The West Bank is quite hilly. It has a mountain ridge running through the middle of it, north to south. And it is covered with Israeli settlements. And these settlements in the popular imagination are a set of caravans haphazardly erected on a hilltop, but in fact they are towns and cities that look identical to the communities of similar size within Israel proper.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And they are connected seamlessly to Israel proper.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): The residents of these communities include Israel's elite. They include Supreme Court justices. They include ministers in the Israeli government and many, many other government employees and leaders in industry. And these people are able to live in these communities precisely because they have been segregated from the Palestinian population that surrounds them.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And they have been given roads that cut through these Palestinian communities without having exits or entrances for the Palestinian communities that these highways pass through.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): And this whole architecture, this infrastructure, gives the residents, the Jewish residents of these settlements, the illusion that they are living in a Jewish-only zone where they don't really have to confront or think about the Palestinians who are just beside them.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And they can go very easily to their workplaces in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and believe that they are living in a suburb just like any other.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): How long have the settlements, the Israeli settlements, been in the West Bank?
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): The settlement project began really as soon as Israel conquered the West Bank in East Jerusalem. In the years that followed the war in 1967, Israeli civilians, settlers, started moving into the West Bank.
--:-- Host (Noel King): They are the children of Ofra, a new settlement of 40 Jewish families on what once was Arab land.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): Those settlements were created by the Israeli center-left that had been in power since the establishment of the state in 1948 and remained in power until 1977.
--:-- Host (Noel King): So for the first decade of the settlement project, it was driven by center-left governments.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): And it's important to stress, it was driven by the government. This is not a story of a bunch of radicals twisting the arm of the state against its will, which is how it's often depicted.
--:-- Host (Noel King): This is a state-driven project, and it is in fact the greatest project, the largest and most expensive project that the state of Israel has undertaken.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): And so as the settlers have moved in, how have they justified this?
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): There are a number of different motivations for moving to the settlements. Broadly speaking, there are three groups of settlers.
--:-- Host (Noel King): There are ideologically driven settlers who believe that the West Bank is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and that they have every right to build homes and establish Israeli sovereignty in these areas.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): No less so than Israel had a right to establish settlements in 78% of historic Palestine, the borders of Israel prior to 1967.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And this is an argument that they make to their detractors in Israeli politics.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): The second type of settler is just an ordinary middle class or upper middle class person who is moving there because there are financial incentives to do so.
--:-- Host (Noel King): You can have a nicer home, a larger home, a less expensive home.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): And because it has all been set up in a way that makes it painless to live there and gives you the sense that this is really no different than any other suburb, members of the middle class do move there.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And what happens over time is they often start to shift ideologically after moving there because every human being naturally wants to feel justified in what they're doing.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): The third type are ultra-Orthodox Jews. And they historically had avoided living in settlements, but that changed.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And they live in a few settlements, but they're very large and dense.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): And those settlements are, for the most part, closer to the edge of the West Bank, closer to the boundary with pre-1967 Israel.
--:-- Host (Noel King): How do Palestinian and Jewish residents of the West Bank interact with each other? Do they interact with each other typically?
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): The Palestinian and Jewish communities in the West Bank are entirely segregated, and the settlements have gates at their entrances and security guards at those gates.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And Palestinians are not allowed to enter them unless they are coming as pre-approved workers, as cleaners or gardeners or construction workers.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): That's the degree of segregation that exists in the West Bank.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Okay, so this is a highly unequal situation. If you are Palestinian in the West Bank, you are subject to restrictions. You are subject to inequities.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): But then on top of that, Nathan, we hear about settler violence. What does this refer to? What does that mean?
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): So settler violence is a broad term that includes everything from settlers going and burning down olive trees of Palestinians who live nearby.
--:-- Host (Noel King): It includes raids on Palestinian communities in the middle of the night.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): It includes activities that Israeli officials even have referred to as pogroms, such as the burning of all kinds of property in the town of Hawara earlier this year or in the town of Turmas Aya last June.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Dozens of settlers came here. They tried to enter the courtyard and they set cars on fire.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): They started shooting towards the house using live bullets and stones, and they broke the balconies.
--:-- Host (Noel King): The Palestinians who are attacked are entirely defenseless in this situation.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): They know that if they lay a single finger on an armed settler who enters their home, they can be arrested and put in jail and locked up in what is known as administrative detention, which is detention without trial or charge.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Israel can do that for six months to somebody and then extend it indefinitely.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): It's unbelievable that people are spending years and years under administrative detentions with no charges. They don't know why. They don't know for how long.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And so when a Palestinian encounters a settler militia, they know that putting their finger on that settler is not putting their hand on an individual.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): It's putting their hand on the entire state of Israel, this enormous machine that controls their every movement and that can arrest them and their family members at any moment.
--:-- Host (Noel King): How is it that the settlers can commit such violence without legal repercussions? Where does the law fit in here?
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): The law doesn't fit in here because there is total impunity for the settlers.
--:-- Host (Noel King): When there are cases filed against settlers for attacks on Palestinians, fewer than 10% result in an indictment and only 3% result in a conviction.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): That's data from the last 18 years.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And now after October 7th, when most of the regular army is off in Gaza or on the border with Lebanon, you have those same settlers who were attacking the Palestinian communities several months ago, now in uniform with full authority to do those same attacks as the army.
--:-- Host (Noel King): We know that there will be an end in Gaza. We don't know what it is.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): And it sounds as though the Netanyahu government and the international community are actively debating, discussing what the end in Gaza will look like.
--:-- Host (Noel King): But in the West Bank, it seems as though there is no end in mind.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): How do you envision this playing out? Where do you think this is all leading, Nathan?
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): No matter how long this war in Gaza lasts, whether it weeks or months or years, at the end of it, we are going to be in the situation that we were in on October 6th, which is 7 million Palestinians, 7 million Jews all living under Israeli rule.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And the vast majority of those Palestinians don't have basic civil rights.
--:-- Guest (Nathan Thrall): That's the situation that the international community and the United States will need to address if they want to see an end to this recurrent bloodshed.
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--:-- Host (Noel King): Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
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--:-- Host (Noel King): They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
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--:-- Host (Noel King): And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
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--:-- Host (Noel King): You're listening to Today Explained. My name is Dalia Hatouka. I'm a journalist. I've been working on Israel-Palestine for about 23 years now.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): I think mostly what I'd like to see is for people to really get to know life as it is in the West Bank.
--:-- Host (Noel King): I'd like them to really get to know Palestinians and not to have these preset thoughts about who Palestinians are.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): I think one of them is the idea that somehow Palestinians hate Israelis or hate Jews.
--:-- Host (Noel King): I don't think that's true.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): I think if there's anybody who really understands Israelis and Jews are probably Palestinians.
--:-- Host (Noel King): I think that no matter what, our fate is united in a sense.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): We have a shared fate, I would say, because we're both not going anywhere and we're going to have to find a way to live on this land together.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Dalia and Nathan Thrall both describe a situation in the West Bank in which Palestinians are very unsafe and violence is perpetrated by settlers supported by Israeli forces.
--:-- Host (Noel King): I asked Dalia what happened in the West Bank after Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): So the things that I've been seeing in the West Bank are kind of reminiscent of the days of the second Antifada.
--:-- Host (Noel King): So an increase in the settler attacks, both in quantity and also in the ferocity, an increase in the numbers of Israeli military checkpoints, the humiliation of Palestinians that set checkpoints, etc.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): So since the 7th of October, we've had at least 200 Palestinians, a quarter of them children killed by Israeli forces, and an additional eight, including one child that had been killed by Israeli settlers.
--:-- Host (Noel King): We've seen raids, Israeli military raids, being carried out every day almost in the West Bank, where Israeli forces are rounding up mostly Palestinian men.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): Some of them are members of Hamas, but many others are not.
--:-- Host (Noel King): We're talking 2,000 people that have been detained since October 7th.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Dalia, when we hear settler violence, what should we envision?
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): Because I'm trying to imagine the circumstances in which a settler, which I understand to be a civilian, not somebody who's in the army, ends up killing a Palestinian child.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And it's a little beyond what I can imagine.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): How do these interactions unfold?
--:-- Host (Noel King): First, I'm not really sure what the designation of international humanitarian law is for settlers, but they are armed.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): They're armed to the teeth, irrespective of what their designation is.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gavir, a settler himself, loosening gun regulations for Israelis and announcing plans to purchase 10,000 rifles for civilian security teams in the West Bank.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): In other words, for settlers.
--:-- Host (Noel King): On the 11th of October, I was talking to this man called Ibrahim Alwadi.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): He was talking to me because some people had been shot and killed by settlers and soldiers in a village near Nablus in the northern West Bank.
--:-- Host (Noel King): He was telling me that he witnessed an uptick in Israeli settler violence in his village.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): And he was talking about how the attacks were relentless.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Like what happens is that these villages are normally surrounded by settlements which sit at the top of the hill while the Palestinian cities or towns or villages are usually at the bottom.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): So the settlers are overlooking these towns or villages.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Anyways his village is encircled by these settlements.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): And the next day, he went with his son to attend the funeral of four Palestinians who had been shot by settlers the day I spoke to him.
--:-- Host (Noel King): It was a funeral procession.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): And Ibrahim and his son Ahmed were attending, as many others from the village were as well.
--:-- Host (Noel King): But the procession came to a halt when settlers arrived and started throwing rocks, and then they started using live ammunition, and both Ibrahim and his son were shot dead.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): But before he was killed, Ibrahim was saying to me that he was worried that the settlers would use the Gaza war as a cover to carry out more attacks.
--:-- Host (Noel King): No one has been taken into custody or charged with their murder.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): A few weeks ago, a Palestinian man was shot dead also by Israeli settlers while working with his family in an olive grove.
--:-- Host (Noel King): I talked to a friend of mine whose aunt and uncle are two elderly folks in the village of Taybe.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): They're Palestinian Americans.
--:-- Host (Noel King): They were also attacked by settlers as they were in their olive groves.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): It's olive season at the moment.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And that's when settlers come out.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): Like they end up, you know, stealing the crops, the tools, the ladders.
--:-- Host (Noel King): They torch vehicles, even trees.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): I mean, my heart is with these trees.
--:-- Host (Noel King): These trees are like hundred year old olive trees.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): Anyways, and the old folks, like the woman's like 82 years old, her wrist was broken, her husband was hit in the head with a rock.
--:-- Host (Noel King): I could go on and on, but these are some of the things that people go through when I say there's a settler attack.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): It's the kind of like, it's a situation where these armed people come down from their settlements, which are fortresses, so to speak, and they attack Palestinians and take what they want, torch what they want.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And a lot of the times it's under the protection of the Israeli army.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): All the time make a problem for us because they want to see this land without Palestinians.
--:-- Host (Noel King): But Palestinians are here.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): We are here.
--:-- Host (Noel King): When you interview Palestinians in the West Bank after incidents like this, and this is, as you've said, been going on for years.
--:-- Host (Noel King): What do they say about their place in the West Bank?
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): What is the mood among Palestinians there?
--:-- Host (Noel King): So the mood oscillates between charged and cautious.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): It moves between fear and anticipation.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Life is very hard here.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): For example, we can't go out because of the checkpoints and roadblocks, and we're constantly worried we could be killed at any time.
--:-- Host (Noel King): You get a sense that people are afraid of a repetition of the 2002 Israeli invasion that destroyed much of the West Bank's infrastructure and left many people dead.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): And I think that a repetition of that invasion is in people's minds, like when they clear out grocery store shelves, for example, because they're worried that there's going to be a stretch of long days where they're being trapped inside due to an army curfew, which may or may not come.
--:-- Host (Noel King): But that's the kind of fear that people have.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Do Palestinians in the West Bank have confidence in their government?
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): No, especially during these past few weeks since October 7th.
--:-- Host (Noel King): There are demonstrations against Israel's bombardment in Gaza.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): But some of the anger has been directed against the Palestinian Authority.
--:-- Host (Noel King): In one incident, for example, protesters threw chairs and other items at Palestinian Authority security forces.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): And these guys lobbed tear gas and stung grenades.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, has been calling for a ceasefire.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): He can speak, but almost no one's listening to him.
--:-- Host (Noel King): He's 87 years old.
--:-- Host (Noel King): He's presided over the Palestinian Authority since 2005.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): He's weak and unpopular.
--:-- Host (Noel King): More than 80% of Palestinians said that they wanted Abbas to step aside and make room for a new leader.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): I think they want a new leadership that speaks to their aspirations.
--:-- Host (Noel King): And I think people don't have confidence in him whatsoever.
--:-- Host (Noel King): The sentiment permeating in the West Bank is one of loneliness and isolation, I would say, and also vulnerability.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): Palestinians feel that there is no one to protect them.
--:-- Host (Noel King): I think that what will happen is the international community will continue to pump money and support for the Palestinian Authority because they can't envision anybody else taking over.
--:-- Host (Noel King): They're also afraid of a scenario similar to what happened in Gaza where Hamas takes over.
--:-- Guest (Dalia Hatouka): And so my fear for the West Bank is that in addition to the political status quo, the status quo on the ground is going to be turning into an opportunity for settlers to take up more territory.
--:-- Host (Noel King): While everybody has kind of shifted their attention and rightly so to Gaza, in the West Bank, we've seen attempts by settlers to carry out these displacements and land theft.
--:-- Host (Noel King): That was Dalia Hatuka.
--:-- Host (Noel King): She's an independent journalist based in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and in Amman, Jordan.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Today's episode was produced by Avishai Artsy and edited by Matthew Collette.
--:-- Host (Noel King): Laura Bullard and Serena Solon are our fact-checkers, and Patrick Boyd is our engineer.
--:-- Host (Noel King): I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Host (Noel King): It's Today Explained.
--:-- [Theme music starts playing]
--:-- Host (Noel King): Tabilities Up
