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For decades, Israeli Jewish settlers have been building settlements in the occupied West Bank. And now, ahead of an October election that could remove it from power, Israel's right-wing government is green-lighting settlement expansion. It's also approving new settlements, including some in areas that are supposed to be under Palestinian political control. The result? Palestinian residents say that they are now encircled and besieged by violent settlers. NPR's Emily Feng reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF SCRAPING)
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: We meet Luay Adele building a cinder block wall around his house. He said he went into debt to build it.
LUAY ADELE: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: "But I need the wall to protect my family from settlers and from the Israeli army," he says. From their house, they look directly across a small valley to the next hill, where Jewish settlers have built the outpost of Evyatar, which was recently legalized by the Israeli government. Living next to Evyatar is like living on the frontlines of a war, his wife Najat says.
NAJAT: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: Because, she says, there's no security. Every few days, she says she discovers a vegetable garden ripped up or a tree chopped down.
NAJAT: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: "The settlers come and destroy everything," she says. This brutal test of opposing wills, settler versus Palestinian, has literally changed the landscape here in the Palestinian town of Beita. The village is in what is known as Area B, land under Palestinian civil administration, but Israel's security control.
AHMED DWEIKAT: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: Ahmed Dweikat, another resident, reminisces when the hills here were covered with olive trees and plants that were green and flowering.
DWEIKAT: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: "But now there's nothing here," he says, The fields around us are yellow with weeds and barren, abandoned by the two Palestinian families who simply moved away under pressure from Evyatar settlers.
DWEIKAT: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: Dweikat points out a chain of four settlements on the ridge surrounding his town, all expanding since the start of the Gaza War in October 2023, forming a chain of Israeli communities that rings Beita. And that is paralyzing the local economy. Here in this local market, rotting melon rinds and cardboard boxes are underfoot because an Israeli settlement cut off the market's access to the local dump. And Serhan Ali Kan'an, a wholesaler here, says more and more of the produce has to be imported from Israel because...
SERHAN ALI KAN AN: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "The settlers forbid us to plant. They cut off our water, and they destroy our greenhouses," he says. The Israeli military says the number of what they call nationalistic crime incidents - their term for settler violence - rose to 120 in 2025, an increase of about 45% from 2024. The Israeli military, police and intelligence say they've started a joint task force to combat this violence. But in July, 600 retired Israeli security officials signed a letter pleading for U.S. President Trump to further pressure Israel's leaders to end what they called settler terror in the West Bank.
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FENG: The letter came after a deadly July clash between settlers and Palestinians and after arsonists in the West Bank village of Qusra, also Area B, partially burned down a mosque. Israel's military condemned this act and said it was investigating.
I can smell the burnt mosque even before I see it.
But Mohammad Al Haj Ahmed says the incident is part of a pattern. Using a soot-stained hand, he points to three Israeli settlements in view through one of the mosque windows...
MOHAMMAD AL HAJ AHMED: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: ...And explains how he used to sneak food and water to a Palestinian home some 150 yards in front of us. Some settlers set up a tent right next to the house this year, locking the family in their own home for three months.
AL HAJ AHMED: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: But they fled two weeks ago, Al Haj Ahmed says, after their water and power lines were also cut by the settlers.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Inaudible)
FENG: That's the goal of these Israeli settlers, activists such as the Israeli group Peace Now say - to push out Palestinian occupants and take de facto control of the land, thereby disrupting any possibility of a future Palestinian state. And in the months before Israel's elections this October, Israel's right-wing government has approved a flurry of new and expanded settlements before a new government could potentially pause them.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)
FENG: The rise in settler attacks has prompted many rural Palestinian communities to organize night watches.
KUSAI ABU AL KABASH: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Shepherd Kusai Abu Al Kabash (ph) welcomes us outside his watch tent with coffee. He stays up until at least 3 a.m. every morning. He knows from experience that the worst attacks come after midnight from a group of settlers so persistent and aggressive, Abu Al Kabash knows all of them by name.
K ABU AL KABASH: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: The 29-year-old describes how this past March, they stripped him, beat him and his family and zip tied his genitals, moments captured by his security cameras.
K ABU AL KABASH: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: But all he can think about now are the nearly 400 sheep the settlers stole, a flock accumulated over two generations and his entire extended family's fortune. His father, Ibrahim Abu Al Kabash (ph), listens to his son in a daze, as if he still cannot believe the tragedy that has befallen them. He slowly unwraps his head scarf in the moonlight...
IBRAHIM ABU AL KABASH: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...To show where the settlers battered him. But it's the sheep that he, too, is worried about. He keeps repeating, we must get them back.
Down a pitted dirt road, the Basharat family are also still wide awake at midnight.
YOUSSEF BASHARAT: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: Their patriarch, Youssef Basharat, shifts positions on a makeshift mattress every few seconds from pain. After being beaten last November by settlers, he says he's dislocated something in his back. And yet he keeps watch.
Y BASHARAT: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: The entire family takes two-hour shifts through the night every night, he explains, beginning after settlers stole a horse from them last year.
NAJAT BASHARAT: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "And when we see settlers, the first thing we do is we'd get our phones to film them, and we prepare stones to throw," says Najat Basharat, his wife, even though the settlers are often armed with guns. Seven other Palestinian families around them have already left because of the settlers.
N BASHARAT: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "And our turn is coming," she says.
N BASHARAT: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "But I know every tree and every stone here," she says, her voice rising. How can the settlers say they are forbidden to me?
Emily Feng, NPR News, Makhoul, the West Bank.
(SOUNDBITE OF RICHARD LACY'S "DESOLATE BEAUTY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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