The morning after Iran launched Tuesday's ballistic missile attack on Israel, Bedouin farmer Fares Samamreh woke at dawn in the occupied West Bank village of Shweika to tend to his sheep and chickens as usual.
A lamb had been born that morning and Fares's son, Jibril Samamreh, chased its mother around a pen, trying to pin her down to feed the newborn. As he did so, Israeli fighter jets roared overhead.
At first glance, few places in the Palestinian territories feel as removed as Shweika from the conflict in Gaza and Lebanon, the raids elsewhere in the West Bank and the wider tension engulfing the Middle East. But Fares and his sons have been on their own personal front line since October 7, which shattered their previously quiet rural existence, long before Iran started launching missiles at Israel.
Their story of massive loss over the past year reveals in sharp detail the lawless direction in which the West Bank is heading, and the powerlessness of Palestinians, the international community and even Israel’s highest courts to protect innocent people against emboldened extremist Israelis intent on seizing Palestinian land.
Fares and other shepherding families, numbering about 200 people, used to live in the village of Zanuta in the South Hebron Hills. Sandwiched between illegal Israeli settlements, including some of the most aggressive in the region, it consisted of a few stone buildings, livestock pens and a small school funded by European states.
Not long after the October 7 attacks, as the world’s eyes were focused on Gaza, settlers in the West Bank seized the opportunity to take swathes of Palestinian land. Bedouin villages like Zanuta, home to some of the area’s most vulnerable people, were the most obvious and easy targets.
Today Zanuta lies in ruins. The National visited briefly on Thursday, just enough time to see the haste in which the community fled, leaving kettles, mattresses and upturned fridges strewn on the ground. After no more than five minutes in the village, settlers approached. Knowing the reports of their violence over the past year, a quick exit was made.
Zanuta’s former residents have had a torturous year that subjected them to violence, financial ruin and short, dangerous stints during which some residents tried to return. There was even a surprising victory in Israel’s High Court of Justice, after legal efforts backed by human rights organisations and European states. The hope was short-lived. The Israeli state soon gave a reason why the community could not return and rebuild.
Now they are scattered throughout the West Bank, in places like Shweika. After serving tea and juice, Fares, a senior member of the community, who carried prayer beads throughout the meeting, told The National about where the residents of Zanuta find themselves. “We lost everything. We lost our homes, our wells, our land for herding and planting,” he said.
His Bedouin people are mostly originally from the Negev Desert, from where many were displaced after the 1948 Israeli-Arab War. They are semi-nomadic and earn a living mostly from agriculture. There are about 40,000 in the West Bank. The English word “Bedouin” comes from the Arabic “badawi”, a desert dweller.
“You have to bear this burden, you just have to bear it,” Fares said, sitting in a bare room lined with mats where men in the community meet. “We came here to Shweika and had to do it all again, from scratch. A new life. It was difficult. It began raining early. And as far as the sheep go, it was a big change for them. They are running over each other and some are even dying for lack of space – they are not meant to live this way."
“The problem is that in Zanuta we had land for planting and harvesting. Now there is nothing,” Mohammed Tal said, another senior member of the community who was visiting Shweika for the day. “Suddenly, we were forced to build new lives out of steel sheets and don't even ask me how much it cost,” he said, while chain-smoking.
Despite the pain of relocating to Shweika, Fares and his sons are still not free from physical danger. In May, Jibril was attacked by settlers. He said they took him at gunpoint, forced him to say things on camera, smashed his phone and then beat him. Pictures that The National saw showed Jibril’s bruised face and lacerations to his head.
“Our weapon is only a camera, while they have M-16s. The settler can hit you, but you can't respond and defend yourself. All you can do is film the crimes being committed against you,” Mohammed said, as Jibril put his phone back in his pocket.
Jibril’s attackers struck as a legal case mounted by the community gathered momentum in their favour, surprising many, and even getting some media attention. It culminated with the High Court of Justice in August telling Israel’s police, military and Civil Administration – a branch of the military that implements Israel’s civilian policy in the West Bank – to make arrangements for the community to return to Zanuta, as well as another village also emptied by settler violence, Um Darit.
The order was viewed as a major win by the human rights organisations and international backers. Israeli courts have long been viewed by activists as uninterested at best in upholding the law when it comes to the rights of Palestinians, although in 2017 the High Court spared Zanuta destruction after it blocked a demolition order.
Following the ruling over the summer, it soon emerged that victory on paper was still not enough to save the village. There were no stringent conditions on the state about what it had to provide residents whose lives had been so badly upturned. The community was also not allowed to rebuild the buildings that had been destroyed by settlers. About 40 members of the community went back to sleep in the open in August, but were defenceless against the same settlers who had attacked them at the beginning.
Then, just weeks after the High Court appeared to grant them a lifeline, the Civil Administration told residents that what little remained of their homes would be demolished if they did not accept a relocation plan that was drawn up by the state. It said there was an archaeological site at the village, which made legalising Zanuta impossible.
When asked about the point of the court, an institution at the heart of Israel’s democratic system, Mohammed said it was only there to “satisfy public sentiment, and especially that of other nations”.
“You had all these lawyers and volunteers, even representatives from other western countries in front of the court. They wanted us to return … The court played us and played the organisations that were helping us."
Mohammed says the only thing that can save them is if the “settler state” led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – whose coalition includes a large bloc of extremist settlers, including ministers whose positions directly relate to West Bank security – is replaced by a better administration.
“Were there to be another government, perhaps something would change, but not necessarily. I'm not saying that all Israelis are bad. There are good people,” Mohammed said. “But the state is in complete control of everything. And this democracy they speak of is meant only for specific people.”
As Fares and Mohammed concluded their story, Israeli jets still roared overhead. They were most likely on their way to bomb targets in Lebanon, one of the many fronts Israel is fighting on after October 7.
The path to victory seems unclear and long in most of those dangerous arenas. In the West Bank, at least for the settlers, victory must feel close to guaranteed.
