In 1995, Badran Moussa built a home for himself, his wife Amira and their small children on a plot of land he bought in the occupied West Bank village of Al Mazraah Al Gharbiyah.
It was the perfect spot for a home, on a hilltop quite isolated from the rest of the village, 11km from the city of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority.
A refreshing evening breeze cooled the family during the hot summer months and the plot was big enough to start a small kitchen garden.
“God is the protector of this home,” reads the sign engraved on a slab of white marble that Mr Moussa plastered on the side of their home when they moved in.
Relations with the residents of the Jewish settlement of Harish on top of the neighbouring hill were not warm or friendly, but they were not hostile either, and that was good enough for Mr Moussa and his family.
“They minded their own business and we ours,” said Firial Zahed, Mr Moussa's daughter-in-law.
But that has changed since the Gaza war broke out in October 2023 after the Hamas-led attacks that killed 1,200 people including soldiers and civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
What was once a peaceful, if austere, life in a cluster of five homes housing Mr Moussa's extended family has become a harrowing experience playing out almost daily, with young settlers descending from Harish to attack and vandalise their homes.
The family's main preoccupation has become protecting themselves, especially Mr Moussa's seven grandchildren, aged between one and seven, and their property.
“It's no longer safe here,” declared Ms Zahed, 29, as she recounted the settlers' attacks, which have included pelting the houses with rocks, smashing windows and knifing car tyres.
The kitchen garden, where the family grew vegetables and fruit, was an early target, and they are now too scared to tend it.
Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. Not long after that, Jewish settlements began to spring up there despite their illegal status under international law.
Violence by settlers against Palestinians remained infrequent for decades until the Gaza war began. Now, the settlers attack with near impunity, often under the protection of Israeli troops.
There have been more than 1,000 attacks by Israeli settlers in 230 communities across the occupied West Bank so far this year, according to the UN. These have led to the deaths of 11 Palestinians, with 700 others injured.
Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since Gaza's war. Most of the deaths have been during operations by the Israeli army.
A report by UN-backed experts in July said settler attacks and intimidation are estimated to have caused the West Bank's GDP to decline by 19 per cent and the unemployment rate among Palestinians there to rise to 35 per cent.
About 700,000 settlers now live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in an illegal move not recognised by most countries. Last month, the Knesset voted in favour of a non-binding motion to annex the West Bank.
“At the beginning of the Gaza war, we used to go out and confront [the settlers],” Ms Zahed told The National. “We pelted each other with rocks. But it grew too dangerous when they began to bring rifles with them.
“Now, we just lock ourselves inside the houses when they attack us.”
The family complained repeatedly about the attacks to the Palestinian Red Crescent and the Red Cross. Crews from the Red Cross recently installed metal bars and wire on most of the windows in the five houses. The cluster of homes now resembles a high-security prison.
Like other family members, Ms Zahed and her mother-in-law, Amira Ahmed, are worried they will meet the same fate as two families who lived closer to the settlement and were forced out.
“They have barred us from using the proper road which only they can use now while we use a dirt road,” said Ms Ahmed, a 60-year-old mother of nine children.
She and Ms Zahed spoke to The National in a large outhouse coated in dust as three of her grandchildren looked on, sharing two cans of fizzy drinks.
“This is the guest room. We had wedding parties here for our boys,” Ms Ahmed mused. “We no longer use the room. No one visits us. Everyone is afraid.
“This is no life. We have no security, but we'll never leave. Even if we do, where will we get the money to buy another house or pay rent?” she lamented.
Minutes later, a small reconnaissance drone began hovering low over the houses.
“It's the army up in the settlement. They do that when they detect unusual activity here,” said Ms Zahed. “It's never a good sign. You'd better leave!”
Settlers brought sheep and tents
About 10km away in the central West Bank, farmers tending to their fields in the village of Atara spotted a group of 20 to 30 outsiders arriving in all-terrain vehicles at around 6am on August 11.
The Jewish would-be settlers, who brought a few sheep, pitched two tents on a nearby hilltop. Villagers called the Palestinian agency that liaises with Israeli officials over the West Bank.
Israeli soldiers arrived at the site around 6pm. They dismantled the tents, but the intruders pitched them again 30 minutes after the soldiers left.
That sequence of events, according to Atara's mayor, Nazar Al Maghraby, continued daily until August 15, when things took a turn for the worse.
“They descended on the village at 3am when everyone was asleep and torched three cars,” Mr Al Maghraby told The National at his office in Atara, which has a population of about 4,000.
Two days later, “one of them came down the hill on a mule and approached the village”, said Mr Al Maghraby, 68, an architect who has been mayor for a year.
Mahmoud Ibrahim, a farmer, told The National he warned the man not to come closer. “I told him that kids will throw rocks at him. But he did not listen and was pelted with rocks a few minutes later,” he recalled.
A video clip taken by Mr Ibrahim of the intruder on the mule showed a man in his thirties or early forties with the traditional appearance of an Orthodox Jew.
The man hurriedly returned to the hilltop. Shortly afterwards, a group of men descended on Atara, randomly firing in the air to scare the villagers who had gathered on the streets.
“Luckily no one was hurt,” said Mr Al Maghraby, who is convinced that the intruders' presence on the hilltop is the nucleus of a new Jewish settlement.
“Already, they've added two tents. Now there are four,” he said, pointing up the hill from the roof of his office building.
He said the group had cut down fruit trees owned by the villagers and vandalised farmland near their outpost.
“There is practically no one available to protect us,” said the mayor. “Our life has changed since they arrived. Many residents are afraid to leave their homes. Men are reluctant to leave home for work because they are worried about their children.”
Mr Al Maghraby says his only recourse to prevent a Jewish settlement being set up near his village is to bring in Israeli and foreign activists opposed to settlements to start a sit-in protest.
Villagers on lookout
On the outskirts of the West Bank village of Sinjil, 21km north-east of Ramallah, Abdullah Fuqahaa stands beside his Chinese-made SUV, gazing intently at the rolling hills before him.
On the other side of the black vehicle is another man in a similar pose and just as heavily built as Mr Fuqahaa, better known by his alias Abulazm. Both men are in their thirties and wearing black trousers and tops.
They are lookouts, watching the hills like hawks for approaching Jewish settlers so they can confront them or at least warn fellow villagers to stay indoors: a two-man early warning system.
“We have no choice but to do this to protect our land and our people,” Mr Fuqahaa said. “I have a field out there that I have not been able to go to and pick my cucumbers,” he told The National as three younger villagers listened attentively.
“But God will make it good again,” he said resignedly.
Attacks by the settlers have terrified Sinjil's residents for months, upending their lives and deepening their resentment of Israel's occupation and the Jewish settlers who they see as land usurpers bent on driving the Palestinians out of their homes.
The village made headlines last month when a Palestinian-American man was beaten to death by Israeli settlers and a second man was shot dead during a settler attack.
The family of the man – Sayfollah Musallat, 20 – said medics were delayed for hours by a mob, before his brother managed to carry him to an ambulance. He died before reaching hospital.
Ezzedeen Nidal Elwan, a 19-year-old builder from Sinjil, avoided a similar fate on April 25 when he was shot in the back by an Israeli soldier as he and other youths from the village fled an attack by settlers.
Mr Elwan, speaking to The National on the terrace of his family's home, had part of his intestines removed and spent eight days in post-surgery intensive care. He was discharged after 90 days.
His right leg is almost completely paralysed from the knee down, requiring him to use a cane for support when walking.
“They always had firearms and we only had rocks,” said Mr Elwan, who cannot work. “The soldier who shot me was masked. He knew he would paralyse me when he shot me in the back.”
Mr Elwan says he has become a chain smoker since the attack, smoking at least 30 cigarettes a day. “There isn't much else that I can do.”
He is convinced the settlers are after Sinjil's farmlands. The attackers, he said, are mostly young men, accompanied by a much older man. “Sometimes, army soldiers try to push them back, but I am not sure they do this in good faith.”
He and other villagers said life had changed dramatically since the attacks began early this year. A high metal and wire wall now separates the village from a highway that offers easy access to other villages and towns in the West Bank.
Four of the five entry points to Sinjil have been shut by the army, residents explained, further restricting access to the relatively prosperous village.
“The men who protect the village are mostly landowners who are now unable to reach their fields,” stated Hamad Tawafshah, 22. “The settlers fire in the air to scare them away if they try to reach their farmlands.”
The extent of the villagers' fear was manifested when a settler's vehicle approached Mr Tawafshah and Mr Elwan recently as they sat in a car with another villager, facing the direction from where the attacks had come.
“There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet,” they said out loud, reciting the Shahadah, the declaration of faith uttered by devout Muslims at times of trial or when they fear death might be imminent.
