Here’s the other side of the present ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. At the Wall Street Journal Margherita Stancati and Fatima AbdulKarim report:
ZANUTA, West Bank—Hanaa Abul-Kbash was home with her children in this tiny village in the occupied West Bank when she says an Israeli settler, armed with a military-style rifle, barged in telling her she had to go.
“I told him this has been my home for 21 years and that I would not leave,†recalls 43-year-old Abul-Kbash of the encounter in late-October. The man grabbed her by the collar, shook her violently, cocked his weapon and left, Abul-Kbash says. Days later, on Oct. 28, she and the roughly 250 other residents of Zanuta abandoned the Palestinian village.
Since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel and the outbreak of the war in Gaza, violent assaults by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank have doubled, the United Nations says. Armed settlers in uniforms have shown up in Palestinian villages threatening to kill those who don’t leave, say residents, Israeli peace activists and the United Nations.
The incidents have prompted over 1,000 Palestinians from at least 15 communities to flee their homes in the West Bank, according to the U.N. and Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem. The number is more than double the total displaced in the West Bank between the start of 2022 and Oct. 6 this year, according to B’Tselem.
It’s difficult to come up with statistics on how many people on the West Bank have been killed by Israeli settlers. Nobody’s reports can be trusted. I have no doubt, however, that the fear is real.
The Israeli government subsidizes the settlements on the West Bank. Consequently, since we provide aid to Israel and money is fungible, we’re paying for those subsidies, at least in part. In a choice between supporting Israel and supporting Hamas it is obvious, at least to me, that we should be supporting Israel. But I also believe that we should be exerting whatever influence we can to end the Israeli government’s subsidization of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.
