'Israeli settlers laid siege to our home': Inside a Palestinian village under weekly attack
In Khirbet Abu Falah, right next door to al-Mughayyir, Brahim Hamayel, an olive farmer I met during a previous settler attack a year ago, told
In Khirbet Abu Falah, right next door to al-Mughayyir, Brahim Hamayel, an olive farmer I met during a previous settler attack a year ago, told me four new outposts had appeared nearby since then - two of them just in the previous month. He pointed out one of them on a nearby hill - built, he said, on private Palestinian land, in an area that is supposed to be run by the Palestinian Authority.
And the attacks had increased too, he said, sometimes targeting the village itself at night. "Since we met last year, the attacks have moved from our farms to our homes," he said. "All my neighbours have been hurt one way or the other; some had their houses or cars burned down. We're putting up barbed wire for protection, as if our houses have become prisons." While we were talking, we saw smoke rising from the village fields.
We watched as settlers moved around the smouldering land. An Israeli army jeep quickly arrived, but it did not stop the settlers starting a second fire, or driving straight past them, back towards one of the new outposts Brahim had pointed out. This road past their fields, increasingly overlooked by settler outposts, has become a gauntlet for farmers here, to be run at speed in vehicles without stopping or getting out.
It is the only open route between Khirbet Abu Falah and al-Mughayyir. Twice when we drove along it, we saw an Israeli settler sitting in the empty fields.
The BriefWire