‘They took our home, our land, everything’: Palestinians displaced by illegal settlers tell their stories

Azam Nawajeh, 62, said one of the Israeli settlers now sanctioned by the UK had blocked roads to his village compound, uprooted trees and destroyed water cisterns. Photograph: Enrique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Salah Abu Awad says he is haunted by memories of the night he was woken up by Israeli settlers who burst into his home and threatened him at gunpoint.

It was one of the many attacks that forced the 28-year-old shepherd and his family to dismantle their homes and abandon their land in the village of Widada in the occupied West Bank’s south Hebron hills.

Abu Awad said he identified the intruders in a police complaint as Ely Federman and Yinon Levy, from the nearby unauthorised outpost of Meitarim Farm.

This month, the UK imposed sanctions on Levy and Federman and two other “extremist Israeli settlers” accused of “egregious abuses of human rights” against Palestinians.

“I hope the sanctions mean something,” said Abu Awad as he grazed his animals on a rocky, windswept hill. “We have suffered a lot from Yinon and Ely. They have confronted me many times, tried to steal my sheep, and ransacked my home.”

Abu Awad, who has eight children from two wives, said he still grazed his animals “like a thief” out of fear of settler attacks, which have increased since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel. Since then, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) has recorded 590 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

The UK Foreign Office said there have been unprecedented levels of violence by “extremist settlers” over the past year, as it announced strict financial and travel restrictions against Federman and Levy, as well as Zvi Bar Yosef and Moshe Sharvit.

It said Sharvit and Levy had in recent months used physical aggression, threatened families at gunpoint and destroyed property as part of a “targeted and calculated effort” to displace Palestinian communities. It added that Federman had been involved in multiple incidents against Palestinian shepherds in the south Hebron hills.

In July last year, Abu Awad fled Widada, where his family had lived for decades, because he felt “caged and threatened”, he said. “We were afraid all the time, living in fear. It was not life.”

Abu Awad said that days earlier, Federman tried to steal his sheep at gunpoint while he was out grazing his flock.

It was the last straw for Abu Awad, who was still reeling from the shock of the home invasion in the early hours of 12 March 2023. Abu Awad recalled: “Yinon and Ely broke into my home. Ely came with an attack dog and a M16 rifle.

“They came inside and opened everything, including cabinets, and made a mess with everything. They asked ‘where’s the money’, but I didn’t have any money. My wife and children were so afraid.”

He said he reported the incident to the police, adding: “I got official paperwork saying I’d filed a complaint but nothing happened.”

Azam Nawajeh, a 62-year-old shepherd, said Levy had also wreaked havoc on the nearby village of Susiya. Levy descended on the village on a bulldozer on 16 October 2023. The village is in area C, the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control.

Nawajeh, a father of seven, said: “Yinon Levy came with others on his bulldozer and he started to close all the entrances to the village compound. They not only blocked the roads, but they also uprooted olive trees, destroyed water cisterns and damaged walls and agricultural terraces.”

Nawajeh said it was often difficult to distinguish between the army and the settlers, who are sometimes armed and dressed in reservist uniforms and masks. The family spoke to Israel’s District Coordination and Liaison Office (DCO), the administrative arm of the occupation, which said it had not ordered the closures. Settlers have been known to intimidate Israeli forces, too – when officers from the DCO turned up to reopen the roads, they were chased away by settlers, Nawajeh said.

He said that six families and their herds relied on the water cisterns which were now “ruined”. He said: “We don’t have water. We cannot connect to the water line, so the cisterns are very crucial for our families.”

Nawajeh said he hoped the sanctions would deter the settlers but he insisted that Israel should also take action. “Every day there is something,” he said. “Yesterday settlers prevented us from grazing in the valley on our private land and they sent a drone with a speaker saying: ‘Go home, go home.’ You’re afraid that they will kill you because they have weapons. It’s very scary.”

For Fares Hassan, this fear was overwhelming. The 57-year-old was among 250 people who made a collective decision to leave the nearby village of Zanuta after weeks of intense settler violence in the aftermath of 7 October.

Fighting back tears, the twice-married father of 18 children said: “They took our home, they took our land, they took everything.”

The UK Foreign Office and local media have linked Levy’s Meitarim Farm to the dismantlement of the village. Hassan said he held Levy, and the other settlers operating from the outpost, responsible.

He said: “We couldn’t sleep at night. They used to come both day and night. They attacked us. They made holes in the water barrels. They didn’t let us feed our sheep and we heard their drones all the time. They terrified us. We couldn’t bear it any more.”

Farther north near Ramallah, Mousa Qatash said he was traumatised from being beaten by Bar Yosef, who set up the illegal Zvi’s Farm outpost in 2018.

The Foreign Office said Bar Yosef had used intimidation and violence against local Palestinians, including twice threatening at gunpoint young families having a picnic.

Qatash said Bar Yosef beat him with clubs while he was out picnicking on his own land in the village of Jibiya on 20 April 2020. He fainted after the assault, which he said left him with bruises, broken teeth, a slipped disc and torn ligaments.

The 43-year-old married father of three, who lives in the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah, said: “Still to this day, when I think about that attack I am traumatised. It was so frightening that I believed God revived me and gave me another life because death was an option at that time.”

For four years, he has been unable to return to his land, missing out on family barbecues and olive harvests.

About 490,000 Israelis live in dozens of West Bank settlements that are deemed illegal under international law. The Israeli rights group Yesh Din said 2023 was the “most violent” year on record for settler attacks against Palestinians.

Levy dismissed the allegations against him as “part of a campaign about settler violence”. In comments to the Guardian, he said the claims were the product of “lefty anarchists who come to harass and cause provocations in the area”.

He denied assaulting Palestinians and destroying and stealing property, saying: “If something like this would have happened, I assume the police would have investigated, but there was nothing.” He claimed that he had in fact been attacked by Palestinians.

The Guardian has been unable to contact Federman, Bar Yosef and Sharvit. Federman’s father, Noam Federman, a central figure on Israel’s extreme right, echoed Levy’s words in comments to Agence France-Presse, saying: “There has for several years been a campaign by anarchists and leftists against the ‘people of the hills’.”

Sharvit also blamed “leftwing organisations” in comments to Israel’s Channel 14, and claimed he was the victim of attacks.

Bar Yosef has filed a defamation claim against the NGO Kerem Navot for calling him a “violent settler”.

Levy has also been targeted by the US, which sanctioned four Israeli settlers on 1 February. France also imposed penalties against 28 settlers this month.

Ori Givati, advocacy director with Breaking the Silence, a group founded by Israeli combat veterans to document military abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the sanctions were a “good step in the right direction”. “I hope it’s just the beginning,” he added. “There should be dozens, if not hundreds, of settlers on those lists.”