The Uprooting of Life in Gaza and the West Bank
Israel’s
Prime Minister has vowed to destroy Hamas and turn its territory into a
“deserted island,” but Palestinians are determined not to be displaced.
October 26, 2023Olive-picking
season in the West Bank, once a quiet, contemplative time for
Palestinians, has become its own kind of battlefront.Photograph by Alessandra Sanguinetti / Magnum
After seven months of drought, it finally came—the first rainfall of autumn. It was now time for Palestinians to pick olives from orchards throughout the West Bank. We have three olive trees in our small garden, in the city of Ramallah—not enough to make oil but enough to preserve the olives for our own use, and to give some away.
For thousands of Palestinian families in the West Bank, though, the olive harvest is considered an important supplement to their income, if a potentially dangerous one. Israeli settlers regularly attack Palestinian farmers during the season and either steal their crops or prevent them from reaching their lands, in addition to destroying or cutting down olive trees. Since 1967, more than eight hundred thousand Palestinian olive trees have been illegally uprooted by Israeli authorities and settlers. Many were centuries old.
For the past several months, Israeli troops have been staging raids in West Bank cities, arresting suspected Islamic Jihad militants and seizing weapons. Meanwhile, Israel’s national-security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has begun arming the more than four hundred thousand settlers who live in the West Bank. As of July, 2023, settlers in the West Bank hold some twenty-six hundred weapons issued by the Israeli Army.
The bulk of the Israeli Army was apparently deployed in the West Bank, away from the southern border with Gaza, when Hamas attacked Israel on the morning of October 7th, killing fourteen hundred people, including women and children, and taking more than two hundred hostages. It appears that the Israeli Army was so confident that there was no danger to the southern border that weapons had been taken away from positions in the area and given to settlements and illegal posts in the West Bank.
The Army’s focus has now shifted to Gaza, where it is expected to begin a ground invasion, and where more than five thousand people have been killed, according to the United Nations, and nearly half of all housing units have been destroyed or damaged, according to the Gaza Ministry of Public Works. Shortly after the Hamas attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would destroy Hamas and turn Gaza into a deserted island. When I first heard this, I could not absorb the full meaning of the word “deserted.” But the meaning has become clearer with each passing day, as Gazan neighborhoods are reduced to rubble, and as civilians have started fleeing from the north of the strip to the south.
A few days ago, I called a colleague of mine, Sharhabeel Al Zaeem, a lawyer who lives in the upscale Rimal district of Gaza City. Both of us had advised the Palestinian negotiators in talks with Israel in 1991, two years before the Oslo Accords were signed, establishing the Palestinian Authority as the governing entity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority still governs the West Bank, but, in 2006, Hamas was elected in Gaza. By June, 2007, Hamas fighters had taken control of the Gaza Strip and removed rival Fatah officials.
Since Netanyahu took office for a second time, in 2009, he has pursued a policy of strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, allowing Qatar to transfer nearly a billion dollars to Gaza while it was under Hamas rule. By keeping this division, and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Israeli government has been able to say that there is no unified Palestinian leadership to negotiate with. But now Netanyahu has set out to “destroy Hamas,” the organization that has been fundamental to Israeli politics toward the Palestinians for years.
I asked Al Zaeem how he was doing in Gaza City. “We suffered terrible wars in the past,” he told me. His house had been spared a direct hit, but all the windows were broken. He had decided to pack up and go with his family to the city of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip. On the way, a convoy ahead of them was hit, killing seventy people. “Two houses have been hit where we’re staying in Deir al-Balah,” he continued. He told me that they’ve been counting the number of shuhada, or martyrs.
I asked him what his food-and-water situation was like. “We’re managing,” he said. “We’re concentrating on staying safe.” How does one do this? I asked. “Only pray,” he answered.
On October 13th, the Israeli government, in preparation for its ground invasion, ordered a million Palestians in northern Gaza to flee south. But the effort to empty the north has had mixed success. The destruction is undeniable. Almost a hundred and seventy thousand residential units have been destroyed, according to the Palestinian foreign minister. And, since October 15th, according to the Israeli military, six hundred thousand people have left for the south. But an estimated hundred thousand people remain in Gaza City. “We will die with dignity and with pride, but we are not going to be killed according to the Israeli army orders and instructions,” as another colleague of mine, Raji Sourani, recently told “Democracy Now!” “I am here like an olive tree. We will never leave our homeland.” Many Palestinians are also returning to the north after discovering that it isn’t any safer in the south, where the bombing has continued.
The violence permeating Gaza has begun to erupt in the West Bank. Since October 7th, the Health Ministry has counted at least ninety Palestinians killed by Israeli troops or settlers. And, as in Gaza, Palestinians have been leaving their homes in the West Bank, out of fear of settler violence. According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, eight communities—home to four hundred and seventy-two people, including a hundred and thirty-six children—have been vacated. In six more communities, at least eighty people have left their homes.
A recent editorial in Haaretz argued that the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank is “a broad campaign, taking place under the auspices of the government of the right-wing and the settlers, and that now, under cover of the war, has gained immense momentum.” Two weeks ago, the U.N. announced that more than four hundred and twenty-three thousand people have been displaced from their homes by air strikes, and are being herded to the south, close to the border with Egypt. On Tuesday, out of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, 1.4 million were internally displaced.
Palestinians were forced to leave their towns and villages in 1948, in a displacement known as the nakba. Today, there is some comfort to be found in the fact that leaders of surrounding countries are, perhaps inadvertently, preventing another nakba from taking place. Egypt has secured its border against a large influx of refugees. Jordan’s King Abdullah II has said, “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt. This is a situation of humanitarian dimension that has to be dealt with inside of Gaza.” In any case, an overwhelming majority of those enduring the hellish bombardment in Gaza would accept temporary refuge only if guarantees were provided for their return to their homes in Gaza after the war ends. This determination of Palestinians not to allow Israel to displace them once again also acts as a restraint against a second nakba.
And yet there’s no way to know how long these barriers can persist. War has begun, and there is no end in sight. Israeli military planners are now saying that the war could last for months. On October 23rd, Israel confirmed that two more of the people held hostage in Gaza since October 7th have been released, bringing the number freed by Hamas to four. Hamas has intimated that more hostages could be released in exchange for a ceasefire and the arrival of more aid to Gaza. Yet Israel has so far ruled out any ceasefire as it intensifies its military operations.
In the meantime, olive-picking season in the West Bank, once a quiet, contemplative time for Palestinians, has become its own kind of battlefront. On October 11th, in the village of Qusra, Israeli settlers shot and killed three Palestinians. The next day, settlers killed a father and son participating in the funeral procession. As I was picking olives, twelve more Palestinians were killed in the refugee camp Nur Shams, near the city of Tulkarm. The Israeli Army is not holding the violent settlers at bay. On October 15th, the Knesset National Security Committee approved loosening regulations to make it easier for Israelis to obtain gun licenses. The lack of security felt by Palestinians in the West Bank has only weakened the appeal of the Palestinian Authority.
The last invasion by the Israeli Army of the entire West Bank, in 2002, followed a series of horrific suicide bombings that were perpetrated by individuals and militant groups against Israeli civilians in Israeli cities. The subsequent invasion tore apart the two nations as never before, with Israel dramatically increasing the building of settlements, confining Palestinians in separate ghettos, and further entrenching Israeli colonization of the West Bank. Unless the U.S. puts pressure on Israel to pursue a ceasefire, and to begin working with Palestinian leaders to reach a comprehensive resolution to this conflict, then the present war will not only move the two sides apart to an even greater extent but inflame the Middle East for many years to come. ♦