- Written by Lucy Williamson
- BBC News, Southern West Bank
The United States will take three more Israeli settlers and for the first time two agricultural outposts as part of new measures by Washington and London to stop the violent displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. announced sanctions.
Fares Samamre may not have a gun, but he has a global superpower protecting him. He's still losing the battle.
The battle between the Palestinian farmer, who herds sheep on the sunny slopes of the southern Hebron hills in the occupied West Bank, and his Israeli settler neighbor, Ynon Levi, draws both the United States and Britain into the conflict. .
“Ynon Levi came here three years ago and started bothering me,” Fares said, his head wrapped in white cotton and his eyes constantly squinted against the sun.
“Before the war [in Gaza] That was always the case. They will come by drone. However, a few days after October 7, the situation became serious. They all had guns. They started coming to us day and night. I have small children, some of whom are 4 and 5 years old. ”
Fares said Inon was part of a group of local Israeli settlers who regularly came to harass the sheep with dogs and weapons, and even assaulted the family. That's what it means.
“They destroyed water tanks, blocked roads and fired at sheep,” he said. “He told his wife that if we didn't get out of here, we'd all be killed.”
Later, when his wife swore at him, Inon Levy hit her with the butt of his gun, he said.
Soon after, Fares and his family left the village of Zanuta. Activists say it is one of four abandoned communities surrounding settler farms.
Yinon denies committing any violence against Palestinians in the area and says he did not own a gun until recently.
However, he is subject to sanctions from both the US and UK.
Inon's path to the farm is straight out of a children's picture book. It's a narrow road that winds back and forth up a steep hill, with slopes and valleys on either side stretching to the horizon.
At the top, next to a large hut, is a spacious bungalow filled with sheep bleating over the pop music playing on the radio.
“We are protecting these lands to ensure that they remain in Jewish ownership,” Ynon said. “If there is a Jewish presence, there is no Arab presence. We closely monitor the land to ensure that no unauthorized construction takes place.”
Most countries consider the settlements, built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, to be illegal under international law, but Israel disagrees. Settler outposts are also illegal under Israeli law.
Britain said Yinon and another man “carried out physical attacks, threatened families at gunpoint, and destroyed property as part of a targeted and calculated effort to displace the Palestinian community.” Stated.
Yinon denied the allegations and said the Israeli government was on his side.
“I'm not worried,” he told the BBC. “This is not against me personally. This is against those who interfere with the establishment of a Palestinian state. There is no legal process against me.” [in Israel]. Everything is fine here. ”
Both the UK and the US claim there are standards of evidence that must be met, but both have not made that evidence public and have refused to share it with the BBC.
We sent Yinon a video showing him approaching an activist with a barking dog on Palestinian soil. He said that was misleading and that he was protecting his herd.
We sent him a video showing him entering another Palestinian village with a gun last October. He declined to comment.
The sanctions were imposed in response to a surge in violence in the West Bank following the October 7 Hamas attack and Israel's war in Gaza.
The United Nations says violence by Israeli settlers includes physical attacks and death threats, and the number of Palestinians forced to flee their homes last year has doubled to 1,539, more than 80% of them since October 7. announced that they had evacuated.
Britain said Israel had failed to act and described an environment of “almost complete impunity for settler extremists in the West Bank.”
Yinon said he received support from Israeli politicians.
“A lot of people called us and encouraged us,” he said. “Everyone said, you must be doing the right thing when the bad people are against you.”
One politician who publicly supported Yinon in the wake of the sanctions was Zvi Scott, of the ultranationalist religious Zionist party, who is himself a settler.
He said settler violence was a “marginal phenomenon” and that people like Levy were victims of a conspiracy.
“When we have a functioning justice system in Israel, we don't want our allies to say, 'We'll do the job for you,'” he said.
“If there is evidence against Ynon Levi, he will be in an Israeli prison. Who are the British to come and say, 'We are smarter than Israeli intelligence'?”
The Israeli police commander in charge of investigating complaints in the West Bank told Mr. Skot's parliamentary committee this week that half of the accusations of settler violence in the West Bank are false and that their sources are ” “A radical left-wing organization in Tel Aviv.”
Against this backdrop, sanctions against a small number of private settlers have not changed Israeli policy in the West Bank, but they have had an economic impact.
Yinon's Israeli bank account was frozen last month.
Some people currently under U.S. and British sanctions are using crowdfunding to fund local projects, including a project for a synagogue and education center in another hilltop outpost called Moshe's Farm. Some people offer .
Its owner, Moshe Sharvit, was sanctioned last month along with Enon Levy.
But the United States on Thursday expanded sanctions to include several new targets, including the farms themselves, putting this kind of money at risk.
These sanctions may be more symbolic than substantive, but both Israeli leaders and President Biden's Democratic base, who have seen footage of the Gaza war in an election year, are dismayed. It shows the displeasure of the United States.
Shlomo Nieman, chairman of the local Yesha (settlers) council, called it an “abhorrent phenomenon” and said the West Bank was being used as a scapegoat.
“My first question is: What is driving the British response?” [and] The US fears settler attacks will get 'out of control,''' said Yehuda Shaul, founder of the Ofek Center, a think tank that aims to end the Israeli occupation.
“West Bank [then] It erupts like a volcano. And as if Gaza wasn't enough, we have another front, and the path to regional war is almost unstoppable. ”
Two shepherds in the occupied West Bank. One is supported by the superpowers, the other by the state of Israel. If life here is simple, politics is complex.
From the hilltop farm in Inon, you can clearly see the ruins of Zanuta on the neighboring hill, where the house of Fares Samamre was left a few months ago.
Many of the houses were destroyed, roofs and furniture taken away by the owners to exile. Activists say settlers have torn down walls to prevent them from returning.
The dilapidated village is slowly being taken over by vast banks of wild mallow.
A large Star of David is scrawled in blue paint on a pillar near the entrance.
Settlers here point to attacks by Palestinians and say they are terrified.
But it is the Palestinians who are leaving.