‘It’s Like a Horror Movie:’ West Bank Palestinians Fear War Will Come for Them Next

It’s easy, amid all the destruction and suffering in Gaza, to overlook what is happening as little as 34 miles away in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. For much of the past 11 months—during which Israel has waged a brutal war of retaliation against Hamas that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians and made much of the coastal enclave uninhabitable—many people have. But as Israeli military action ramps up in the West Bank, and as Israeli settler incursions on Palestinian land become even more brazen, attention is slowly turning back to the forgotten territory. There, residents and activists tell TIME that they fear war could come for them before long, too.

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“What’s happening in Gaza is happening at a much smaller scale in the West Bank,” Omar Haramy, the director of the Palestinian ecumenical organization Sabeel, tells TIME. While West Bank Palestinians haven’t experienced the horrors of bombardment to the same degree as those in Gaza, he adds, they’re starting to get a taste for it now. In the past week, the Israeli military has conducted a series of raids and airstrikes on the territory, targeting what the Israeli government says are “Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures.” At least 22 people have been killed as a result, according to Palestinian health authorities. Critical infrastructure including roads, water, and energy grids have been destroyed. Residents of at least one refugee camp were given evacuation orders.

“People are traumatized,” Haramy says. “I mean, it’s nothing compared to what’s happening in Gaza; Gaza is a genocide. But if you just go around the West Bank, there’s no infrastructure, communities have no water or access to electricity … It’s like a horror movie.”

Others say it’s more like history repeating itself. “They bring up these huge military bulldozers and just start digging up roads,” says Dalia Hatuqa, a Palestinian-American journalist based in Ramallah and Amman, noting that the scenes of destruction are “very much reminiscent of the 2002 invasion,” during which Israeli launched its largest military operation in the West Bank since taking control of the territory in 1967.

This history, and the present horrors in Gaza, loom large over Palestinians in the West Bank as they brace for a situation that could get much worse. “People are drawing parallels between what happened in the Nakba and the Naksa,” Hatuqa says, referencing the mass displacement of Palestinians that took place in 1948 and 1967, respectively. “There’s palpable fear.”

This new front in Israel’s multi-pronged war effort comes at a time when the country’s treatment of the Palestinians, millions of whom live directly or indirectly under its control, is under intense scrutiny. In July, the U.N.’s top court declared in a landmark opinion that Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is illegal and should end. Since that verdict, however, the Israeli government has signaled that its control of the territories will only become more entrenched, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting this week that Israel must continue to maintain a physical presence in Gaza in order to control the border area between the coastal enclave and neighboring Egypt. The map that the prime minister used to make the case for this notably omitted the Green Line that separates Israel proper from the West Bank, in what many observers dubbed an open admission of de facto annexation.

For many Palestinians in the West Bank, creeping Israeli annexation has been a lived reality for years, as new and existing Israeli settlements—which are considered illegal under international law—continue to pop up throughout the territory. In addition to the 146 settlements recognized by the Israeli government, there are estimated to be at least 196 informal settlements, or outposts, scattered throughout the West Bank, according to a recent BBC analysis—29 of which were established in the past year alone. These outposts aren’t established peacefully or with the inhabitants of the land in mind. Palestinian families have reported facing rapidly increasing violence from Israeli settlers who, under the fog of war in Gaza, have become more brazen in their efforts to displace them from their land—including storming villages, torching homes, and threatening to kill those who don’t leave willingly. Of the 628 Palestinians killed in the West Bank between Oct. 7 and Aug. 27, according to the U.N.’s human rights office, 11 were killed by settlers; a further eight were killed by either settlers or Israeli security forces in joint attacks. 

“They set cars on fire, they burn trees, they burn houses—and none of them are being held accountable,” Haramy says. If anything, he adds, Israeli settlers have enjoyed the tacit support of the most far-right government in Israel’s history—one that includes ministers, some of whom are themselves settlers, openly calling for the annexation of the West Bank.

Read More: ‘The Arsonists Are Running the Fire Station’. Why Israeli Settler Attacks Are Growing More Frequent

In the absence of Israeli government intervention, Palestinians such as Alice Kisiya have been left to fend for themselves. Last month, the 30-year-old Palestinian activist, who holds Israeli and French citizenship, was arrested by Israeli authorities after protesting against the attempted seizure of her family’s land in the Makhrour Valley, near Bethlehem, by Israeli settlers. The family has been defending their right to the land since 2012, when the Israeli Civil Administration, which governs the lives of Palestinians living in 60% of the West Bank, demolished their family-run restaurant on the grounds that they did not have a valid permit for the building. (Such permits are rarely granted to Palestinians, according to the U.N., including in cases where the land for which the permit is requested is undisputedly owned by the applicant.) The Kisiyas rebuilt their restaurant, only for it to be demolished in 2013 and again in 2015. In 2019, the Israeli Civil Administration issued yet another demolition order, this time for both the family’s restaurant and home.

“They are trying to make us leave that area, but we didn’t,” says Kisiya, whose family has since resorted to setting up a solidarity camp just outside their land, where they have been joined by supporters and peace activists. They have been barred from accessing their land, which the Israeli authorities declared a “closed military zone.” “We are staying in the solidarity tent to prove our existence.”

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem estimates that at least 168 families have been forcibly displaced since October. But Kisiya is determined that her family, which count themselves among the last Christian families in the area, will not be among them.

“It’s not easy to just let go of where I was raised and all my memories that are there—with the business of the family, the house, the trees that we were planting,” she says. “It’s not easy to give up on our life, because this is their strategy.”