Synne Bjerkestrand
29 July 2025
The aftermath of a settler attack in Sinjil, 23 April.
Faiz Abu RmelehActiveStills
Muhammad Olwan, 47, has lived in the West Bank town of Sinjil his whole life, and he said that this year is the worst he has experienced.
“The occupation is doing everything it can to make us leave our land,” he said. “But where should we go? I will never flee no matter what, this is our homeland.”
Olwan is a local coordinator of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, an organization of Palestinian farmers that supports them as they defend their rights in occupied Palestine. He lives with his wife and four children in this town of 7,500 inhabitants northeast of Ramallah.
On a rainy afternoon this past March, Olwan drove The Electronic Intifada along a winding road to the top of the village, which consists of narrow streets lined with white stone houses. At the lookout point, Olwan pointed to the hilltops about 500 meters away.
“Up there, you see one of the five illegal Israeli settlements,” he said.
The settlement, Shilo, is surrounded by a concrete wall, and the houses are mostly built with red-orange pitched roofs that are distinct from the white-stone Palestinian homes in the area.
The Israeli occupation heavily monitors and controls Sinjil, isolating it from the rest of the West Bank and subjecting its residents to surveillance and its homes and farms to demolition and razing.
Israeli settlers terrorize the Palestinian residents of Sinjil and have set fire to their homes and attacked individuals with clubs and stones. This past July, three months after The Electronic Intifada’s visit, attacks by Israeli settlers on Sinjil intensified.
On 11 July, settlers “beat to death” Saif al-Din Musalat, a 20-year-old US citizen who was visiting relatives. Musalat’s family said that he was killed while “protecting his family’s land from settlers who were attempting to steal it.” The settlers had been attempting to build an illegal outpost on the family’s land.
The same settlers shot and killed Muhammad Rizq Hussein al-Shalabi, 23. Both men died after settlers prevented ambulances from reaching them.
Muhammad Olwan, 47, has lived in the West Bank town of Sinjil his whole life, and he said that this year is the worst he has experienced.
“The occupation is doing everything it can to make us leave our land,” he said. “But where should we go? I will never flee no matter what, this is our homeland.”
Olwan is a local coordinator of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, an organization of Palestinian farmers that supports them as they defend their rights in occupied Palestine. He lives with his wife and four children in this town of 7,500 inhabitants northeast of Ramallah.
On a rainy afternoon this past March, Olwan drove The Electronic Intifada along a winding road to the top of the village, which consists of narrow streets lined with white stone houses. At the lookout point, Olwan pointed to the hilltops about 500 meters away.
“Up there, you see one of the five illegal Israeli settlements,” he said.
The settlement, Shilo, is surrounded by a concrete wall, and the houses are mostly built with red-orange pitched roofs that are distinct from the white-stone Palestinian homes in the area.
The Israeli occupation heavily monitors and controls Sinjil, isolating it from the rest of the West Bank and subjecting its residents to surveillance and its homes and farms to demolition and razing.
Israeli settlers terrorize the Palestinian residents of Sinjil and have set fire to their homes and attacked individuals with clubs and stones. This past July, three months after The Electronic Intifada’s visit, attacks by Israeli settlers on Sinjil intensified.
On 11 July, settlers “beat to death” Saif al-Din Musalat, a 20-year-old US citizen who was visiting relatives. Musalat’s family said that he was killed while “protecting his family’s land from settlers who were attempting to steal it.” The settlers had been attempting to build an illegal outpost on the family’s land.
The same settlers shot and killed Muhammad Rizq Hussein al-Shalabi, 23. Both men died after settlers prevented ambulances from reaching them.
Lockdown
To get to Sinjil this past March, The Electronic Intifada took a taxi from Ramallah. The driver took us north, past the settlement of Beit El and its concrete walls punctuated by booths where, presumably, armed soldiers sat inside. Graffiti by one checkpoint read in Arabic: “No future in Palestine.”
Five of the six entrances to the village were closed, blocked by rocks. Since October 2023, the Israeli army has closed nearly all entrances to Sinjil.
Olwan took The Electronic Intifada on a tour of Sinjil to listen to the stories of what daily life is like in this village and to understand and see the legacy of the occupation’s long history of land theft and violence.
Mrawah Abdul Haq was only 13 years old when Israel expanded its occupation to the West Bank in 1967. He clearly remembers how and when the settlements were established. Since then, he has been attacked three times by armed Israelis. The last time was in 2024, when he was 70 years old.
Settlers came and attacked him while he was harvesting olives, and broke his arm.
“They attack us just because we are Palestinians, a form of collective punishment,” he said. “I’m not a politician or a soldier, I’m just a human who demands to live on my land.”
His family had better access to roads and land before 1967, since they were not blocked off as they are now. Now, he cannot enter the field where he used to work, as the Israeli army has closed off all the entrances to the village but one.
Furthermore, the Israeli occupation “accelerated the construction of a new separation wall” around Sinjil in January 2025, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, destroying Palestinian homes and farms.
The wall is designed to further cut Palestinians off from their land and isolate the town from the rest of the West Bank.
Two of Abdul Haq’s grandchildren ran around in the living room, playing and laughing with each other and hugging their grandfather as he recalled his experiences during the first intifada in 1987.
The Israeli army forced the family from their home and blew it up. He spent some time in jail. The family lived in tents for over seven months before they could return to the wreckage of their home.
“My wife was pregnant with our son, but he died in her womb when we were living in the tent, as a result of the conditions she was living under,” he said.
He and his family eventually rebuilt the four-story house where they now live.
He said that the Israelis are trying to drive Palestinians away by any means: violence, forced displacement and threats.
“They want to destroy our love for our land in any way,” Abdul Haq said. “They don’t want Palestinian farmers to be in contact with their land. It’s ugly and evil in a way that’s impossible to describe.”
Farms turned into grazing land
In mid-October 2023, Israeli settlers stole the farmland of Palestinian farmer Hussam Aida.
A group of settlers, along with backing from the Israeli army, came early one morning to check the area. They uprooted olive trees and took over the area.
“I haven’t been there since,” he said. “I risk being killed because the settlers guard it with weapons. They can shoot us at any time, they have permission from the authorities.”
Several Israelis have stolen land by letting their sheep graze in Palestinian areas, he said, then they claim the area as their own and deny Palestinians access.
The Israelis have destroyed what Aida describes as a paradise that once had an abundance of fruit and vegetables. It is now a grazing area for livestock.
Aida has been to court four times to try and regain access to his land, but he has lost every time.
“What do you expect to happen when the judge is your enemy?” he said. “They control everything. Everything is illegal for Palestinians here. Everything is illegal under the occupation.”
Murder of Yousef Fuqahaa
Since The Electronic Intifada’s visit in March, the village has witnessed continued violence, displacement and terror at the hands of settlers who occupy the lands near the village and the army that supports them.
Olwan wrote to The Electronic Intifada via WhatsApp on 3 June that “all villages [in the West Bank] became a prison.”
On 2 June, the occupation forces shot and killed 14-year-old Yousef Fuad Abdel Karim Fuqahaa.
“The village of Sinjil, along with all local institutions and residents, mourns the loss of this innocent boy,” he wrote.
Defense for Children International - Palestine, reported that “Israeli forces opened fire on [Fuqahaa] suddenly and without warning around 3 pm” at the northern entrance to Sinjil and then confiscated his body.
“The deliberate killing of children, followed by the inhumane withholding of their bodies,” wrote Olwan, “reflects a systematic attempt to terrorize Palestinian communities and suppress their resilience.”
Olwan described the killing of Fuqahaa as “part of a broader pattern of escalating violations against Palestinian civilians.”
On 19 and 20 June, the occupation forces uprooted more than 86 olive trees from privately owned Palestinian land along the old Nablus road, on the northern side of Sinjil.
The olive trees belonged to six landowners, Olwan wrote.
Synne Bjerkestrand is an independent journalist based in Jordan.
Patriarchs, heads of churches condemn settler attack on Christian town in occupied West Bank
Church leaders say assault on Taybeh part of alarming pattern of settler violence, urge Israel to ensure accountability
Tarek Chouiref |29.07.2025 - Update : 29.07.2025
West Bank (Photo by Mamoun Wazwaz)
JERUSALEM/ISTANBUL
Patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem on Tuesday strongly condemned a settler assault on the Christian town of Taybeh in the central West Bank, calling it part of a disturbing pattern of violence aimed at intimidating Palestinian communities.
In a joint statement, the church leaders said several vehicles were set ablaze and racist graffiti was sprayed during the attack, describing it as “an unambiguous act of intimidation directed at a peaceful and faithful community rooted in the land of Christ.”
They noted that masked settlers, some armed and others on horseback, had recently raided the town, threatening residents and even reaching the walls of the historic Church of St. George.
The statement criticized Israeli police for reducing the incident to mere property damage, saying such omissions “distort the truth and fail to address violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, including the right to religious freedom and the protection of cultural heritage.”
The church leaders also denounced “reactionary disinformation campaigns” by settler-affiliated groups, warning that such narratives sought to discredit victims and deflect international scrutiny.
They urged the Israeli government to hold perpetrators accountable, ensure consistent protection for the people of Taybeh, and uphold its obligations under international law.
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, a group of illegal settlers raided Taybeh early Monday, torching two vehicles and spray-painting racist slogans on the wall of a Palestinian home. Israeli forces later entered the town with several military vehicles following the assault.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, saying it reflected “disregard for international reactions” to earlier settler assaults on the town, including attacks on its cemetery and the historic Church of St. George earlier this month. The ministry urged “firm international measures” to compel Israel to end settler violence and bring those responsible to justice.
Last month, illegal settlers also set up a new outpost on the ruins of Palestinian homes demolished after violent attacks in Taybeh last year.
Following the July 7 assault on the town’s cemetery and church, patriarchs, church heads, and diplomats from over 20 Arab and foreign countries visited Taybeh in solidarity with its residents.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, at least 1,009 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in the West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
JERUSALEM/ISTANBUL
Patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem on Tuesday strongly condemned a settler assault on the Christian town of Taybeh in the central West Bank, calling it part of a disturbing pattern of violence aimed at intimidating Palestinian communities.
In a joint statement, the church leaders said several vehicles were set ablaze and racist graffiti was sprayed during the attack, describing it as “an unambiguous act of intimidation directed at a peaceful and faithful community rooted in the land of Christ.”
They noted that masked settlers, some armed and others on horseback, had recently raided the town, threatening residents and even reaching the walls of the historic Church of St. George.
The statement criticized Israeli police for reducing the incident to mere property damage, saying such omissions “distort the truth and fail to address violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, including the right to religious freedom and the protection of cultural heritage.”
The church leaders also denounced “reactionary disinformation campaigns” by settler-affiliated groups, warning that such narratives sought to discredit victims and deflect international scrutiny.
They urged the Israeli government to hold perpetrators accountable, ensure consistent protection for the people of Taybeh, and uphold its obligations under international law.
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, a group of illegal settlers raided Taybeh early Monday, torching two vehicles and spray-painting racist slogans on the wall of a Palestinian home. Israeli forces later entered the town with several military vehicles following the assault.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, saying it reflected “disregard for international reactions” to earlier settler assaults on the town, including attacks on its cemetery and the historic Church of St. George earlier this month. The ministry urged “firm international measures” to compel Israel to end settler violence and bring those responsible to justice.
Last month, illegal settlers also set up a new outpost on the ruins of Palestinian homes demolished after violent attacks in Taybeh last year.
Following the July 7 assault on the town’s cemetery and church, patriarchs, church heads, and diplomats from over 20 Arab and foreign countries visited Taybeh in solidarity with its residents.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, at least 1,009 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in the West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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