From the outskirts of his West Bank city, the mayor surveyed the rocky hills stretching toward the Dead Sea, where Palestinians had long farmed and grazed, and pointed out the new features of the landscape.
New guard posts manned by Israeli soldiers. New roads patrolled by Israeli settlers. And, most tellingly, a new metal gate blocking the city’s only path to those areas, installed and closed by the Israeli army to keep Palestinians out.
“Anyone who approaches the door is either arrested or killed,” said the mayor, Moussa al-Shaer, of the city of Tuqu.
On the other side of the gate, atop a bare hill in the distance, stood one of the area’s new residents, Abeer Izraeli, a Jewish settler.
“With God’s help, we will be here for a long time,” Mr. Izraeli said.
The case of the two people on either side of the door is a particularly clear example of a dynamic playing out throughout the Israeli-occupied West Bank. While much of the world has focused on the war in Gaza, Jewish settlers miles away in the West Bank have accelerated the pace at which they are seizing land formerly used by Palestinians, human rights groups say.
Dror Etkes, a field researcher with Kerem Navot, an Israeli monitoring group, estimated that since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 that started the war in Gaza, settlers have taken more than 37,000 acres of land from the Palestinians. throughout the West. Bank. More than 550 of those acres are near Tuqu, making it the largest such expansion by a single Israeli settlement.
The door doesn’t have much to look at: it is made of orange bars and is similar to what one might find on a farm. But the Hebrew graffiti on the concrete blocks that support it refers to Genesis 21:10, a verse about chasing people away.
Since its installation in October, the gate has served as a firm divider between the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of Tuqu and the Israeli Jews in the recently expanded settlement of Tekoa.
Both communities take their names from the place where, according to tradition, the biblical prophet Amos was born. In some places, the houses of one community are 500 meters from the houses of the other. When the Muslim call to prayer sounds in Tuqu, the Jews in Tekoa hear it too.
The catalyst for the recent seizures, Etkes said, was the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, which led to increased Israeli security measures in the West Bank that made it easier for settlers to take control of the territory.
“There is a link between violence and settler expansion,” he said. “They are taking revenge on the Palestinians by seizing more and more land.”
Israel has increased its military presence in the West Bank for fear of facing widespread unrest or increased attacks on its forces and settlers there during the war in Gaza. Those concerns have been amplified by the rise of new militant groups, an influx of weapons smuggled from Iran and polls suggesting a rise in support for Hamas at the expense of the more moderate Palestinian Authority.
On January 29, a Palestinian from Tuqu, Rani al-Shaer, 19, tried to stab an Israeli soldier and was shot dead by soldiers, the army said in a statement. The army took Mr. al-Shaer’s body and has not returned it to the family, said his brother, Nizar.
The Israeli military and the branch of the Defense Ministry that handles civil affairs in the West Bank did not respond to requests for comment on the changes near Tuqu.
The United Nations said 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since it began tracking in 2005. That violence increased significantly after the war in Gaza began and has continued through this year, with 489 Palestinians murdered since October. May 7 to 22. Ten Israelis, including four civilians, have been killed during the same period.
Since Israel occupied the West Bank, formerly controlled by Jordan, in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the government has encouraged Jews to settle there, providing them with land, military protection, electricity, water and roads. More than 500,000 settlers now live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the territory, which is larger than Delaware but smaller than Puerto Rico.
Some Israeli Jews justify the settlements on religious grounds, others on historical grounds, both ancient and modern. Many Israelis consider control of the territory necessary to prevent Palestinians from attacking Israel.
However, most countries consider settlements illegal. The Biden administration has criticized the settlements for undermining the US goal of a two-state solution to the conflict, which would include the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Among Israelis, Tekoa is known for its hippie vibe, with a mixed community of secular and religious Jews that includes artists and activists. Few, if any, city residents consider their presence an impediment to peace.
“God gave us this land,” said Shira Chernoble, 75, who moved from New Mexico to the West Bank nearly four decades ago and works in Tekoa as a massage therapist and spiritual counselor. “I believe in the Torah. It’s not just a book from then. It is a book for now.”
Before the war in Gaza, the two populations had limited interactions, mainly through Palestinian construction workers in the Jewish city. Settlers have seized land to expand their community over decades, a process that took another step forward after the Oct. 7 attack.
The Israeli army mobilized thousands of reservist settlers to protect the settlements and imposed extensive restrictions on Palestinians, blocking exits from their communities and preventing Palestinian workers from entering Israel or the settlements.
That cut off Tuqu residents from a major source of employment, said al-Shaer, the mayor. Additionally, the gate has prevented Palestinian farmers from harvesting their olives and herders from herding their livestock.
“They closed everything down and took everything away,” said Hassan al-Shaer, 24, an electrician not closely related to the mayor and who used to work in Tekoa. “There is no job or money.”
In October, after the gate was erected, residents gathered to break the barrier and the army fired on them, killing a 26-year-old auto mechanic, Eissa Jibril, said his brother, Murad.
He said that the Israeli police had questioned him about what happened, but that nothing had come of it.
“Who can I complain to?” he said. “Are you going to arrest the settler who killed him?”
In a statement, the Israeli military described the meeting as “a violent riot” during which “terrorists burned tires, threw stones and shot fireworks” at the soldiers, threatening their lives. The soldiers responded, the military said, adding that it was aware of the “claim” that a Palestinian had been killed.
Since then, Palestinians have avoided the gate for fear of being shot.
During a recent tour of the area, New York Times reporters saw new roads dug into the hillsides, four new security posts, and three plots where settlers had plowed or planted grapes. What had been a settler camp now had 10 prefabricated houses, with electricity, paved roads and street lighting.
At the top of a high hill, Izraeli and his friends slept in a tent next to a makeshift house inhabited by a couple with two small children. The group raised ducks and chickens and herded their 150 sheep on the same hills where Palestinian shepherds roamed before the war.
Izraeli, 16, had arrived in the West Bank after leaving a religious school in central Israel, he said. He and his friends had lived in a nearby tent camp before moving to the top of the hill a few months ago, after the army banned Palestinians from entering the area.
He hoped that the army would not allow them to return.
“With God’s help, they will do the right thing and keep them out,” he said.
In response to written questions, Mayor Yaron Rosenthal of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, which includes Tekoa, said the Tuqu Arabs never had a legal claim to the land. The settlers, he said, had rectified that situation.
“These are not their lands,” he added.
Palestinians had few options, said al-Shaer, the mayor. Most complaints to the Israeli authorities went nowhere. He and other residents planned to file a court case in Israel, a lengthy process that might not restore their access to the land or prevent settlers from building there.
“The settlers are working on the ground to create a new reality,” he said.
Rami Nazzal contributed reports from Tuqu, West Bank and Gabby Sobelman from Tekoa, West Bank.