The war is in Gaza, but Palestinians in the West Bank are targeted with violence too

This story is a part of an NPR series reflecting on Oct. 7, a year of war and how it has changed life across Israel, the Gaza Strip, the region and the world.

AL-MU’ARRAJAT, West Bank — In a sun-filled classroom for elementary-aged students, decorations and posters showing the Arabic alphabet have been ripped from the walls, chairs toppled, papers and documents from a filing cabinet crumpled and strewn across the floor. The door to the classroom is tied with rope; its handle lies nearby, bashed and warped after the door was kicked in a day earlier.

A group of extremist Israeli settlers stormed the small primary school last month while it was in session.

In a video filmed that September day by an Israeli human rights activist, the settlers are seen wielding wooden bats and charging through the schoolyard. They beat a young teacher, attack the activist who’s filming and try to break into locked classrooms where students were sheltering.

“The teacher told us all to come and hold the door shut so they can’t break in,” remembers nine-year-old Obeida Mleihat. He peeks into the classroom he was sheltering in, and points to a fan in the corner.

“I was standing over there,” he says. “I was scared.”

In the year since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel last Oct. 7 – which Israel says killed around 1,200 people and sparked the current war in Gaza, which has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians – violence by Israeli settlers and the Israeli military has also erupted against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

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Near-nightly military raids take place in many cities. Israel says these are part of counterterrorism efforts against Hamas and other militant groups that have stepped up attacks against Israelis. The military raids have become longer, more frequent, more deadly and more destructive than in the past. According to the United Nations, at least 698 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023. Outside urban areas, settlers have increased threatening attacks on rural Palestinian communities, aiming to push them from their land.

Obeida’s dad, Suliman Mleihat, is the head of this rural Palestinian Bedouin community, tucked into the rolling hills of the Jordan Valley. He rushed to the school when he heard the attack was happening — both his young children were there. He says the Israeli military showed up and blocked him and other parents from entering, but also didn’t stop the settlers. (The Israeli military did not directly comment on this incident in response to an NPR request.)

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“My children are my soul, so it was incredibly difficult to not be able to get to them, to not know if they were okay,” Mleihat says. When he did finally get to them, he hugged them both very tightly.

Mleihat says he recognized this group of settlers. They’d attacked the community before – poisoning sheep and hurting people.

“But coming to the school, and threatening children, this is new,” he says. “This crossed a major line.”

Mleihat says that the settlers are trying to get them all to leave, to evict the Bedouin community. And he says it’s a real possibility, if attacks like this continue. But where would they go?

Attacks are orchestrated to force Palestinians off their land

Allegra Pacheco is an American attorney who heads the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of international nonprofits focused on protecting Palestinians in the West Bank from forced displacement and attacks.

“Settler violence isn’t just about a group of young guys on a hilltop anymore,” she says, invoking a common stereotype.

Pacheco has been working in the West Bank for decades. She says before last Oct. 7, most Israelis living in settlements in the West Bank — all of which are illegal under international law, though not necessarily under Israeli law — were relatively unconcerned with nearby Palestinians as long as they didn’t interfere with settler life.

“Now we're seeing much more rhetoric that ‘Palestinians are the enemies,’ that they're legitimate targets,” says Pacheco. “And that, of course, transfers into the violence that we’re seeing.”

Attacks by settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank skyrocketed after last Oct. 7. The United Nations has documented nearly 1,400 attacks – not including harassment or threats – in the past year. The years 2023 and 2024 so far have had the highest number of incidents since the organization began collecting data nearly 20 years ago.

The attacks are often orchestrated to intimidate Palestinians into leaving their land – Pacheco says about 17 communities have been forcefully displaced this way in the past year alone.

“Once the Palestinians are chased out of these areas, the settlements move in and make it much harder to give back the land to the Palestinians,” says Pacheco.

That is the goal.

The Yesha Council, the Israeli umbrella organization for all the settlements in the West Bank, has it listed on its website in English: “To prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.” And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government – with ultranationalist lawmakers in major positions of power overseeing the West Bank – encourages the expansion of illegal settlements, and instructs the Israeli police and military to protect them.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank have become so disruptive that the International Court of Justice ruled this year that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal – calling on Israel to cease its presence in the occupied territories, including dismantling Israel settlements there and paying reparations to Palestinians for damages caused from the occupation.

Meanwhile, world leaders, including President Biden in his 2024 State of the Union address, are still pushing for a two-state solution.

Fears that the West Bank will become the next Gaza

In late August, the Israeli military launched one of its most extensive and deadliest raids in the West Bank in years, centered on the Jenin urban refugee camp, home to about 24,000 residents. The raid lasted 10 days and killed 39 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials. Three Israeli police officers were also killed, according to the Israeli military.

The Israeli military left much of Jenin in ruins. Jenin Mayor Nidal Abu Saleh says at least 70% of the city was destroyed in the raid.

Driving through Jenin weeks later, the damage is still clearly visible. The streets have been ripped up and there are giant potholes from explosions. Much of the infrastructure is damaged, too – water and sewage flow through the streets and power lines are ripped down.

The Israeli military says operations like this are necessary for counterterrorism. Jenin and other cities in the West Bank have long been militant strongholds, which have grown more active since last Oct. 7.

As schoolchildren carrying backpacks try to navigate the piles of rubble and debris in the streets, community leader Farha Abu Hejah observes that the violence has been especially difficult for them.

“The children have a hard time getting to school because of the rocks and the holes in the road,” she says. “And the raids are terrifying. The children are in panic. Families are in total panic. It really impacts everyone’s psychological state.”

Abu Hejah grew up in Jenin, and has lived there all her life. She says the Israeli military has been targeting the refugee camp for many years, but never like this. Now, “It’s a complete destruction of life and infrastructure. It looks like Gaza,” she says. “Jenin is Gaza, but in the West Bank.”

Khalil Shikaki, a political scientist and pollster in Ramallah, says his recent polls have show that Palestinians in the West Bank are feeling increasingly unsafe, unprotected by their own leaders and at the mercy of Israeli troops and even airstrikes – which were rare in the West Bank for the past two decades but have become regular in the past year.

“These last few months have essentially brought in tremendous fears that the destruction in Gaza is going to happen in the West Bank as well,” Shikaki says. “There is a significant rise in the perception of West Bankers that Gaza is coming to them.”

Family homes are destroyed

Near the center of the Jenin refugee camp, through a small courtyard off a ripped-up street, is the Abu Ali family home — where 26 family members, including eight children, once lived spread over three floors.

Now, the main floor apartment is charred and covered in debris. A melted and warped ceiling fan hangs overhead in the living room, a crumpled refrigerator sits in what was once a kitchen. The back wall is blasted with a giant gaping hole.

The family matriarch, Raeda Abu Ali, says Israeli soldiers arrived in the night and ordered everyone out of the house. They carried a gas canister into the back room.

“They told us to count to three, and you’ll hear your home explode,” she remembers. “That was a terrible moment, when I listened to my house blow up.”

A burned metal gas container still sits in the middle of the floor.

Abu Ali says the soldiers gave no reason for why they blew up the house. No one in her family is affiliated with any militant groups, she says.

The Israeli military told NPR that it was not aware of this specific incident, but added that “during the operation in Jenin, laboratories in a civilian area that were used by terrorists to prepare explosives were dismantled.”

She says they hope to rebuild, although she worries their home could be destroyed again. When asked if she can file a complaint, Abu Ali almost laughs.

“Who will listen to us? There’s no side that I can address this complaint to,” she says. “Look at Gaza. Look at the destruction. Who’s listening to them? Why would someone listen to us?”

As she speaks, her sister-in-law Samira Abu Ali begins weeding the front garden. Raeda’s three-year-old grandson plays nearby.

Samira says the plants were blown across the courtyard in the explosion, but she picked them up and replanted them.

She points to a small red flower on one of them, and smiles. Even after all that, she says, it bloomed.

Nuha Musleh contributed to this report from the West Bank. Itay Stern contributed from Tel Aviv.