Yousef Shanaran, 52, built his two-storey home in 2016 on land between the town of as-Samu and the village of Susiya in the South Hebron Hills, planting about 70 grapevines and 30 to 40 olive trees and digging a well. Since October 5, he told Al Jazeera, Israeli settlers have besieged the house around the clock. The family cannot step outside on their own, even to reach the well. It took five days for the army to coordinate access, and after the family ran out of water, the army on Tuesday allowed them to draw some.
"Food, there's none," Shanaran said by phone. "My well, full of water; I built it and lost money on it. They keep me from it because they want to get me out of my house."
More than half a year ago, settlers pitched a tent 300 metres from the residence. On October 5, the tent was moved to 30 metres from the home, and that day about 50 settlers attacked the family with sticks and pepper spray, according to the report. Nothing now moves in or out without army permission.
Nasser Nawajeh, a longtime B'Tselem field researcher who heads the Susiya village council in Masafer Yatta, has tried repeatedly to deliver supplies. Most attempts failed. "Once I tried to bring aid to the people, and right away there was an attack from the settlers. I mean they're there 24 hours to attack," he said. He called the siege a displacement policy: if children are to reach school, or food and water brought in, the army must coordinate it. Since October 15 he says he has asked daily, and been told "tomorrow and tomorrow."
Nawajeh says there are now two forces to contend with: the settlers' rapid response squads, the Kitat Konenut, and the regular army, which "comes, demolishes [the settlers' tent] and leaves," allowing settlers to pitch it again. The house is in Area B, nominally under joint Israeli-Palestinian control, where a closure order against the settlers exists. "But there's no enforcement of these laws," he said. "In practice, the Palestinians are living in a prison inside. The siege is basically a prison."
Shanaran said prison would end. "Here, you're sitting in your own house, and they've locked you up in it, and you're afraid."
The same pattern is reported elsewhere. In Qusra, settlers besieged three homes, one owned by an American citizen, before the army set up barracks beside them. In Jalud, the Tubasi family was forced from their home in July and attacked in September when they tried to return under a court order. B'Tselem's Yair Dvir said the Qusra siege drew wide coverage largely because one of those involved held US citizenship. "In reality, attacks like these occur continually across the West Bank," he said.
Settlers have built more than 400 outposts across the West Bank, isolating Palestinian communities. Dror Etkes, cofounder of the monitoring group Kerem Navot, said the doorstep sieges reflect "an advanced stage of the complete collapse of any rule of law, any attempt to enforce law in the West Bank." Violence that once kept families off grazing and farmland is now moving into built-up areas, he said, as settlers work to "expel certain families who are residing outside of the big cluster of a built-up area."
In Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, the home of Muhammad al-Abayat, home to 15 people since 1973, sits between the settlement of Ateret and one of six outposts around the village. Mayor Marwan Sabah said settlers pitched a tent at the family's door in late September and fixed a gate blocking the path. The children cannot reach school, and al-Abayat's wife is ill and needs an operation. The village won a court ruling and a police decision to open the gate, but "the settlers lock the gate themselves most of the time," Sabah said. He described a "suffocating siege," with the village cemetery, the olive harvest and even rubbish removal under settler control. On October 20, the Israeli Civil Administration issued a demolition notice for the Abayat home.
In Madama, south of Nablus, the army sealed all three main entrances to the village with earth mounds on October 12, forcing villagers, including teachers, women and children, to cross the mounds on foot. The same day, a weeklong siege of neighbouring Burin was lifted.