The “they” Mona Saleh is referring to is the Israeli authorities.
The grieving mother-in-law said it is clear to her and other Palestinians in the West Bank that Israel is using the world’s attention on the Gaza war to intensify efforts to “colonize” Palestinian territory.
“They are taking advantage of the war and the status quo,” she said.
Her family has also not returned to their farm since Bila Saleh was killed, fearing further attacks by settlers.
An IDF spokesman declined to comment on Mona Saleh’s allegations and said the investigation into her death was the responsibility of Israeli police.
“When IDF soldiers encounter unlawful acts by Israelis, particularly acts of violence against Palestinians or their property, they must intervene to stop the violations,” the spokesman said. “If necessary, they should arrest or detain suspects until police arrive.”
Asked about the increasing number of killings of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank since Hamas attacks on October 7 that left 1,200 people dead and about 240 kidnapped in Israel, the spokesman blamed Hamas for the violence in the West Bank.
An IDF spokesman said there had been a “significant increase in terrorist attacks” in the West Bank, with “more than 2,000 attempted attacks since the start of the war.”
But according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Rights (OCHA), there have been more than 1,000 attacks by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the ongoing blockade of Gaza.
According to the OCHA report, these attacks forced the displacement of around 1,390 Palestinians, including 660 children.
“It gives them a big excuse to do what they were already planning,” Sayel Kanaan, the Palestinian mayor of Burqa, a West Bank town almost entirely surrounded by settlements, told NBC News.
According to the United Nations, 553 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank in the past 10 months. Fifteen Israelis were killed in the same period. (Israeli officials have accused the UN of undercounting the number of Israelis killed in the West Bank.)
The United Nations reported that at least 507 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank throughout 2023, 81 of them children, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians in the region since 2008.
Dozens of Israeli settlers, some wearing masks, attacked a Palestinian village in the West Bank on Thursday, burning a car and killing at least one person, authorities said.
According to health authorities in the Gaza Strip, 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Strip since the war began on October 7.
Saleh was a beloved figure in the community and hundreds of mourners attended his funeral in Ramallah, where he sold olives, figs and prickly pear cacti that he grew on his land, as well as sumac, sage and other herbs that he foraged in the hills where Israeli settlements stand.
Mona Saleh said that even before her son-in-law was killed, he and other Palestinian farmers had suffered harassment and intimidation by armed Israeli settlers. The settlers had stolen farmers’ ladders and destroyed their crops, but the Israeli army had made no attempt to stop them, she said.
“With each passing day, my feelings for him only grow stronger,” Mona Saleh said.
Israeli settler Yehuda Hacohen speaks to NBC News in Jerusalem. NBC News
Rabbi Yehuda HaCohen, a New York native who moved to the West Bank 20 years ago and posts videos of himself speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on YouTube, said he condemns violence against Palestinians.
But in an interview, Hacohen said building Jewish settlements in the West Bank is part of a strategy to “reclaim” their ancestral land, which settlers call Judea.
“The only way to resist is to create as many Jewish communities as possible to make it physically impossible to expel us,” said Hacohen, a father of eight who lives in a settlement called Beit El.
“It’s essentially a suburb of Jerusalem,” he said.
While the international community does not recognise Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and condemns its seizure of Palestinian land, Hacohen said Jewish settlers consider the land theirs and they will continue to take it.
“We consider ourselves members of an ancient and proud people who were unjustly driven from our land by the Romans,” he said. “We must get our land back.”
Hacohen said he personally has no problem with having Palestinians as neighbors, but they also must accept that “we’re not going anywhere,” adding that he has not witnessed any violence against Palestinians by settlers.
Last month, the UN’s highest court ruled that Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank is “unlawful” and called for it to end “as soon as possible.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the court’s ruling as a “false verdict.”
A fire breaks out in the West Bank village of Burqa after a settler attack on June 7. NBC News
Residents of the dusty desert town of Canaan, population 4,000, who say settlers have pelted their homes with stones, have put up metal bars over their windows. Canaan said he has seen a marked increase in settler attacks since Oct. 7.
Canaan said Burqa is almost completely surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements that have mushroomed in recent years, and the main road out of Burqa has been blocked for years by concrete barriers trucked in by settlers, forcing Palestinians to travel along dirt roads to reach nearby cities such as Ramallah.
As a result, what would normally be a seven-minute drive turns into nearly an hour-long trek, Kanan said.
“If you try to get around the barrier, they’ll kill you,” Kanan said of the settlers.
By refusing to rein in the settlers, the Israeli military is enabling them to take over Palestinian territory in the West Bank, the mayor said.
“There’s no responsibility for doing this,” Kanan said, driving through the village’s main intersection, where a “We are Burqa” sign hung beneath a tattered Palestinian flag.
When troops come, “they come here to protect the settlers,” Canaan said, repeating an accusation many Palestinians make against the Israeli military.
“They’re actually making it worse,” Canaan said.
