Masafer Yatta reels from bloody settler assaults
A series of pogroms in four West Bank villages left residents and solidarity activists hospitalized with head wounds, broken bones, and internal bleeding.
On the night of September 4, Zainab Dababseh was inside her small home in Khirbet Khilet Al-Dabe’, a hamlet in the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank, when she heard her husband Abbas screaming outside. Looking out the window, she told +972 Magazine, “I saw a group of settlers, about 15 of them, beating him.”
A masked and armed mob had descended from the nearby Israeli outposts of Havat Ma’on and Avigail and stormed the village, which had already been devastated in May when the Israeli army razed 90 percent of its structures in a single morning.
Zainab tried to shelter with her four children — Kteibeh, Anas, Ezz Al-Din, and 3-month-old Yaqeen — in their single-room dwelling, which they had built from the rubble of their demolished house. But after attacking Abbas, the settlers pepper-sprayed the family through the windows and broke down the door. One settler hit Zainab on the head with a stick and jerked Yaqeen’s crib away from her.
“I moved forward and put my hands on the bed to protect my baby girl. I was terrified they would kidnap her,” Zainab recalled. She continued to hold onto the bed tightly as the settlers hit her hands with batons. “They pepper-sprayed me and Yaqeen again. She was crying.”
At that point she counted seven settlers inside the house. They took turns beating the whole family with rods and metal pipes. Eight-year-old Ezz Al-Din suffered a brain hemorrhage and spent four days in the hospital. Next door, the attackers beat Zainab’s 86-year-old parents Amna and Ali Dababseh as they slept outside the ruins of their own destroyed home.
At least five homes in Khilet Al-Dabe’ were targeted that night, and nine residents were transported to the hospital in the nearby city of Yatta after suffering serious injuries, including fractures and internal bleeding.
Ali Dababseh is taken into an ambulance after being attacked by Israeli settlers, in Khilet Al-Dabe’, Masafer Yatta, Sept. 4, 2025. (Basel Adra)
Abbas Dababseh, who underwent surgery on his hand, had been stabbed with a knife in the leg, and suffered fractures in his hands, ribs, and nose. His father-in-law Ali was left with a head injury and fractures in his hand, while Amna was wounded on her left palm and head. Hani Dababseh, another resident of the village, was also stabbed in the legs.
As the settlers retreated, residents lay bleeding from head wounds and broken arms, children choking from pepper spray, and elders sat crumpled, bones shattered. We arrived at this scene in Khilet Al-Dabe’ from our village of At-Tuwani not just as journalists, but first and foremost as sons of this land and the neighbors of the victims. Settler rampages like this are a wound in our collective body.
But vicious as this particular assault was, it is no aberration. Since the murder of our friend and activist Awdah Hathaleen in his village of Umm Al-Khair on July 28, settlers have carried out at least four bloody attacks across Masafer Yatta, leaving dozens injured and entire communities traumatized. These are not “rogue mobs”: they are one violent arm of Israel’s state policy of systematically driving Palestinians from their land.
Just two weeks after the pogrom in Khilet Al-Dabe’, on September 20, Israeli forces arrived in the hamlet to demolish the Dababseh’s rebuilt room, along with bathrooms, tents, caves and every water tank in the village that the settlers had not already destroyed — sending a clear message that they intend to make our survival here impossible.
Masafer Yatta today is a microcosm of Palestine as a whole: villages under siege, lands stolen, people targeted simply for resisting their erasure. Yet despite the bloodshed and the destruction, we remain. On this land, passed down to us by our grandparents, we resist with our very existence. Masafer Yatta bleeds, but we are still here.
A cave in Khilet Al-Dabe’, Sept. 26, 2025 (Omri Eran Vardi)
‘Suddenly, the settlers were all around us’
The first in this latest series of settler rampages came in the early hours of August 15. Just after midnight, 56-year-old Khader Nawajah and his wife, Fatima, were sitting in the trailer attached to their truck in the Palestinian village of Susiya, seeking relief from the suffocating heat of their tin-roofed house. Their daughter Dalia, 28, was asleep in her small room a few meters away.
The first sound they heard was shattering glass. A group of more than 15 settlers — many masked and armed with batons and stones — had arrived from the nearby illegal outpost of Mitzpe Yair. Stones rained down on the family’s jeep parked a few meters away, followed by shouting voices and pounding feet. “Suddenly, the settlers were all around us,” Khader recalled.
When he stepped out with a flashlight, he was immediately struck in the face by a large stone. Blood began gushing from a wound on his head as settlers hurled more rocks, breaking his arm and bringing him to his knees.
Fatima tried to run to Dalia’s room but was chased and beaten; one settler swung a baton at her with such force that her right arm snapped. “I could hear my daughter screaming inside [for her father] but I couldn’t reach him,” she said. Dalia eventually dragged her mother inside, trembling as stones rattled the walls.
Outside, Khader lay bleeding and gasping for breath. “We were sure [the settlers] intended to kill us,” he told +972. The settlers only fled when neighbors arrived with flashlights, shouting and forcing them to scatter.
A car damaged in a brutal attack by masked Israeli settlers armed with clubs in the village of Qawawis in Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank, Aug. 28, 2025. (Omri Eran Vardi/ActiveStills)
Six days later, in the nearby village of Khirbet Umm Nir, a mob from the Israeli settlement of Susya (built on the ancestral land of the Palestinian residents of Susiya) assaulted the Makhamreh family while they tended farmland near their home. 67-year-old Jibreel Makhamreh sustained a serious head wound, requiring 12 stitches.
Then on August 25, around 15 masked settlers from Mitzpe Yair attacked the village of Qawawis. Armed with clubs, stones and pepper spray, they injured several Palestinian residents and three Israeli solidarity activists, who were hospitalized with head injuries and broken limbs.
The attackers smashed windows in homes and vehicles, wrecked the solidarity activists’ car, and destroyed cameras at the village’s Comet-ME building — an NGO that provides electricity, water, and internet to Palestinian communities not connected to the power grid in Area C of the West Bank. The cameras had been installed precisely to deter such attacks.
Despite video evidence of the assault, neither the Israeli police nor the army have taken action. Indeed, as settlers began grazing their flock in the Qawawis valley a few hours before the violence erupted, police reportedly refused to respond to residents’ and activists’ calls for help.
An Israeli solidarity activist is injured after being attacked by masked Israeli settlers in the village of Qawawis in Masafer Yatta, Aug. 28, 2025. (Omri Eran Vardi/ActiveStills)
From resistance to resilience
In the two years since October 7, the explosion of settler violence in Masafer Yatta and across the West Bank has triggered a fundamental shift in the nature of Palestinian popular resistance. Munther Amira, a social worker and veteran activist from Aidah camp in Bethlehem, has witnessed this transformation firsthand.
Before October 7, he recounted to +972, popular resistance often took the form of non-violent protest and symbolic acts of defiance. Demonstrations were held on occasions like Palestinian Prisoners’ Day and Land Day, or in flashpoints such as Hebron’s Shuhada Street. Cultural events and campaigns — like accompanying farmers during the olive harvest to protect them from settler attacks — sought to amplify Palestinian voices and rally international support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
For Amira, the movement once revolved around a single goal: “To end the occupation and allow the Palestinian people to live in freedom and peace.”
Even then, Amira noted, peaceful protest was met with repression. “Unarmed defiance in Palestine was always risky,” he said, recalling friends of his who were killed by Israeli soldiers during peaceful protests.
Palestinians face Israeli forces during a protest in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, June 17, 2022. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)
But today, any attempt to demonstrate or even organize tours for international media is blocked by Israeli forces. And acts of solidarity that once formed the backbone of resistance — such as staying overnight with families facing demolition, something Amira helped organize in the village of Khan Al-Ahmar to prevent its destruction in 2018 –– now often lead the army to retaliate against Palestinian residents, he observed.
In response, much of the work has shifted from protest to what Amira calls “resilience-building:” installing water tanks and solar panels, setting up security cameras, distributing food parcels, rebuilding homes, and creating safe spaces for children. “When families have no food, no water, and no security, staying on their land becomes impossible,” he said.
Still, Amira believes the popular resistance movement must find a way to reclaim its public voice, “not only to provide material support but also loudly and clearly reject the occupation in every possible way.”
As Amira put it, “Before October 7, we marched for freedom. After October 7, we fought to help people survive. Now, we must find a way to do both.”
In response to +972’s inquiry about the recent wave of settler attacks in Masafer Yatta, an Israeli army spokesperson said that “the IDF takes all forms of violence seriously, rejects and condemns any illegal behavior, and acts in accordance with military orders and the values of the army. The IDF employs the means at its disposal, including issuing restraining orders against individuals who endanger the security of the region.”
The spokesperson claimed that the army received a report of Israelis assaulting Palestinian civilians on August 15 in Susiya and dispatched forces to the scene, but “the incident had concluded before the forces arrived.” Six days later, by the time Israeli forces received a report of a settler attack and arrived in Khirbet Umm Nir, the spokesperson said “the Israeli civilians had already left the scene.”
On August 26 in Qawawis, “a report was received of a clash between Israelis and Palestinians in the same village” and “security forces were dispatched and acted to disperse the confrontation.” Finally, the spokesperson claimed that “on September 4, a report was received of Palestinians being assaulted by several Israeli civilians” in Khilet Al-Dabe’, but upon the arrival of army and police officers, “no suspects were identified. The claim regarding several injured Palestinians is known.
“All the aforementioned incidents have been transferred to the Israel Police for further handling,” the spokesperson concluded.