SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
President Trump has made clear there will not be an annexation of the West Bank.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. Nope. I will not allow it. It's not going to happen.
PFEIFFER: But for the 3 million Palestinians living in the occupied territory, Israel's control has increased significantly since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. Palestinians have seen their livelihoods constricted and their lands confiscated at unprecedented rates. As the world's attention has been focused on Gaza, NPR's Carrie Kahn brings us this reporting from the West Bank.
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CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Ayesha Taleb sits on the cement floor of the kitchen in her two-room home cleaning milky white strips of sheep stomach. She stretches them around small hooves ready for boiling for tonight's dinner.
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KAHN: She recalls back in August when about two dozen men, masked Jewish settlers, rushed into their village of Qawawis near Hebron.
AYESHA TALEB: (Speaking Arabic).
KAHN: "They started chasing everyone, the boys and the girls," she says. "We ran inside and locked the doors, but they smashed the windows and sprayed something through the broken glass. Everyone was screaming," she says. Her husband, Taleb Nieman (ph), says he tried to outrun the men but was caught.
TALEB NIEMAN: (Speaking Arabic).
KAHN: "They hit me in the back," he says, and broke his hand as he tried to protect his face from the blows. He has the attack on video. He pulls out his cell phone.
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KAHN: Security cameras he installed around the village capture the men, their faces covered. The tassels of their Jewish religious clothing hang down under long, black shirts.
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KAHN: They break windows, smash solar panels and finally take the cameras out. Since 2023, the United Nations registered nearly 3,000 attacks against Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank and more than 1,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, Jewish settlers and other Israelis.
NIEMAN: (Speaking Arabic).
KAHN: "Our whole life has changed. We can't farm, we can't leave the house," says Taleb Nieman. And he says he hasn't worked since Israel revoked Palestinian work permits after the Hamas attack. The West Bank's economy shrank 17% last year, according to the World Bank. Unemployment now tops 34%. He's culled his sheep herd for food. He only has about 60 left, down from nearly 300.
Activists and Palestinian authorities say the army does little to stop the violence, a charge Israel's military repeatedly denies. It says it's preventing terrorism. At least 58 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in attacks in the West Bank in Israel. But since the war in Gaza, more settlers are armed.
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ITAMAR BEN-GVIR: (Speaking Hebrew).
KAHN: Israel's National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, himself a settler and ultranationalist member of the government, has handed out record numbers of arms to Israelis, like at this recent event where he proclaims that weapons save lives and buildings and cities. NPR contacted nearly a dozen leaders of West Bank settlements. All declined interviews, many citing unfair treatment in the press. Only one agreed to talk.
ARYEH ELDAD: This is the Judaean desert, between the mountain of Jerusalem all the way to the Jordan Valley.
KAHN: Aryeh Eldad is 65, a physician, a former member of the Knesset and a longtime settler activist. He's standing on the back deck of his home in the settlement of Kfar Adumim. He doesn't believe Jewish settlers, who now number about half a million in the West Bank, are attacking Palestinians.
ELDAD: They are trying to take over the land. We are trying to take over the land. And the clashes between these two movements are extremely natural.
KAHN: In a religious war that has no resolution, he says. He credits the hamas attack, however, with bringing the settlers' perspective more into the Israeli mainstream.
ELDAD: More and more Israelis are not fooling themselves that we will ever have peace with the Arabs, at least not with the Arabs in Israel.
KAHN: Settlement expansion has soared under the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Illegal outposts, on average, have grown tenfold to about 50 per year, according to the antisettlement group Peace Now. And nearly two dozen new and existing settlements were recently legalized by Israel, despite being deemed illegal under international law. One is Homesh, which Eldad tried to defend as Israeli troops removed residents from there a decade ago.
ELDAD: I promised the people who were really crying, don't cry. We will be back. So it's a dream come true.
KAHN: Several thousand settler housing units on a controversial plot of land were recently greenlit, too, in an area that, when built, will effectively split any future Palestinian state in half. This rapid expansion comes as a record number of countries, including major Western allies, now recognize a state of Palestine. Yet on the ground, that reality is getting chopped up, says Palestinian Authority deputy foreign minister Omar Awadallah.
OMAR AWADALLAH: They are trying to turn it into isolated communities. They want to take out the idea that there is people, a united, one people, living here.
KAHN: Hundreds of new gates and checkpoints erected in the last year now make what had been short rides between cities and towns into unpredictable, hourslong treks. Raids and arrests are at all-time highs. Muhammad Ahmad, a 23-year-old university student, was arrested just weeks after the Hamas attack on southern Israel. He was held in an Israeli prison for nearly two years. He asked only his first names be used for fear of retribution from Israel for speaking to the media.
MUHAMMAD AHMAD: (Speaking Arabic).
KAHN: "The conditions were terrible. It was so dirty and stifling," he says, "14 men held in one small cell. We were in constant fear of the guards' beating," he says.
MUHAMMAD AHMAD: (Speaking Arabic).
KAHN: "We were just waiting for death," he says. When contacted for comment about allegations of beating and inhumane conditions, Israel's prison system said, all inmates are treated in accordance to the law. Muhammad was released just weeks before the Gaza ceasefire was signed. Initially, he was charged with being a Hamas activist and held for months but was kept an additional 17 months under a controversial procedure allowing detentions without trial or charges.
IBRAHIM NAJJER: (Speaking Arabic).
KAHN: "That's not unusual," says Ibrahim Najjer (ph) of the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission. On average, there are about 3,500 Palestinians held without charge in Israeli prisons at any given time since October 7. He says authorities keep the numbers artificially high to convince Israelis they're combating a huge security threat in the West Bank. Muhammad says he lost more than 50 pounds in prison.
MUHAMMAD AHMAD: (Speaking Arabic).
KAHN: "Young people around the world live in freedom except for us. We deserve it too," he says. He's already back in university, studying nursing. He says he's determined to regain his strength and his future. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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