After visits by US ambassador Mike Huckabee to the nearby Israeli settlement of Shilo, Palestinian Americans in Turmus Ayya have witnessed a terrifying rise in attacks... Abandoned by the US: Palestinian Americans trapped in a surge of Israeli settler violence

Ashraf Rabi on the farm where he breeds Arabian horses in Turmus Ayya. He is worried that settlers attacking the village could harm his horses. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Mon 3 Aug 2026 06.00 EDT

By Andrew Roth and Sufian Taha in Turmus Ayya, West Bank. Photography by Quique Kierszenbaum

No man’s land in Turmus Ayya lies where the US flags end and the Israeli flags begin. It is a few hundred metres of soil scorched by molotov cocktails where Israeli settlers have placed a boulder to tell the Palestinian villagers: this is our land now.

On one side of that boulder are the white-stoned mansions where the Palestinian residents of Turmus Ayya live. About 80% of them are US citizens, members of the diaspora in New York, Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey, who return for the summers and bring their children here to experience Palestinian culture and learn Arabic. Many call themselves proud American patriots and fly the stars and stripes from their balconies.

On the other side is an illegal Israeli outpost of corrugated metal trailers and shacks staffed by young men who claim all of the West Bank as Jewish land.

The outposts radiate from Shilo, a hilltop settlement across the valley that has become a destination for Americans seeking Judaism’s first religious and spiritual capital before the first temple was built. Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has visited Shilo, which the UN says is a violation of international law, twice in the last two years.

The irony is not lost on people here that the US has backed settlers claiming the West Bank as theirs, and that US dollars – through Jewish charities and the US budget to support the Israeli military – have helped finance the Israeli land grab. Given Shilo’s close ties to the US, they muse that some of those attacking Turmus Ayya could be fellow Americans.

“Only in Palestine will you find American citizens invading American citizens for land,” said Yaser Alkam, a semi-retired family law attorney from Turmus Ayya who for 35 years lived in Anaheim, California. He is now the head of this village’s council. “There is no fight. One side attacks and the other side defends with the limited means that we have.”

The violence is relentless. At night, settlers roam the village in off-road vehicles and intimidate people with gunshots, screaming and shining flashlights through the windows....READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/03/palestinian-village-trapped-surge-settler-violence-turmus-ayya-west-bank

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"I visited almost 200 locations. It was never intended to be a project — it was a journey to educate myself and to witness the Palestinian loss of 1948." A Palestinian photographer’s ‘search for what remained’ from 1948 When Nablus-based journalist Ahmad Al-Bazz received an Israeli travel permit, he rushed to visit nearly 200 villages depopulated in the Nakba. Five years later, his new book offers a powerful visual archive of erasure.

Ahmad Al-Bazz | The Erasure of Palestine

How did the experience of documenting these depopulated villages shape the way you perceived and moved through the 1948 territories?

Once you cross the wall, everything feels very foreign. I knew that I was still in Palestine — I’m just crossing a wall that divides it — but what I saw on the ground felt very different from what I was used to. It looked Western, but not like any specific place. You might be standing in front of a very Western-looking city, yet know that it was built over a Palestinian one — like Tel Aviv, which was built on part of Al-Manshiyya and a few other villages. As a photographer, that pushed me to search for what remained and to photograph it. In that sense, the act felt like a form of visual decolonization.

It was also a weird feeling because you are suddenly among the settler community. They don’t know that you’re Palestinian, and you never feel completely okay about it. Yet architecture photography helped me connect with these sites. That was also the visual style of the book: you see the Palestinian layer and the Israeli layer in the background, and I wanted to show the contrast between the two.

As you said, many of your photographs show how closely these depopulated Palestinian villages lie beside new Israeli construction, fenced off with vegetation growing over and obscuring them. What did the condition of these villages tell you about Israeli society?

Palestinian sites take different forms today. Some are destroyed, completely erased, or reduced to rubble, sometimes in nature in the middle of nowhere. In other places, surviving structures are scattered between Israeli houses, as in Haifa, or in Ijzim [now the Israeli moshav Kerem Maharal) and Ein Hod, where wealthy Palestinian houses are inhabited by Israelis. Some sites are abandoned, while others are reused in strange ways: a Palestinian school may become an Israeli school, as in Al-Tira, or a mosque may be turned into an animal shelter, as in Kawfakha. 

https://www.972mag.com/palestinian-destroyed-villages-nakba-photography/ 

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New Israeli barrier will slice through precious West Bank farmland- Palestinians who have worked the ‘breadbasket’ area for generations face being replaced by Israeli settlers... “All these [Palestinian] families have title deeds. They grow grapes, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, bananas, za’atar and olives. This land is very rich and that is the reason it is being taken. The whole aim is to take it over for settlers to use it.” Abdullah Bsharat: The council leader said he had been told by Israeli officers that the road and barrier would together be 50 metres wide, but Palestinian buildings or farmwork would not be allowed along a 200-metre cordon on either side.

Julian Borger and Quique Kierszenbaum in Atouf, West Bank

Sat 13 Dec 2025

THE GUARDIAN 

 

" “It is happening all through the Jordan valley, especially in the north. Israel is pushing forward, and accelerating the ethnic cleansing of this area,” said Dror Etkes, an Israeli activist who is the founder of the Kerem Navot organisation, which monitors Israeli land policy in occupied Palestine." 

The fertile land around the village of Atouf in the West Bank. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

The death knell for the Palestinian village of Atouf, on the western slopes of the Jordan valley, arrived in the form of a trail of paper, a series of eviction notices taped to homes, greenhouses and wells, marking a straight line across the open fields.

The notices, which appeared overnight, informed the local farmers that their land would be confiscated and that they had seven days from the date of their delivery, 4 December, to vacate their properties. A military road and accompanying barrier was to be built by Israel right through the area.

Lawyers for the Atouf village council have lodged an appeal, but long and bitter experience has taught Palestinians here to have low expectations of Israeli courts.

“The Israeli military can do anything they like. They don’t care about the law or anything else,” said Ismael Bsharat, a local farmer.

Similar eviction notices had been delivered on the same day all along an almost 14-mile (22km) strip of Palestinian farmland running north to south through Atouf, tracing out the route of the planned road and fence. And this week it became clear that this abrupt gash across Palestinian land was the first section of a new line of division that would redraw the map of the West Bank.

This week, Israel’s defence ministry made clear that this would mark only the first section of a new 5.5bn-shekel (£1.3bn) barrier that will eventually run 300 miles, from the Golan Heights on the Syrian border to the north all the way down to the Red Sea near Eilat. Labelled “Crimson Thread” by the Israeli military, the barrier will split countless Palestinian communities along its route... READ MORE    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/13/new-israeli-barrier-slice-through-precious-west-bank-farmland

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In 1948 Albert Einstein along with 28 other prominent Jewish leaders wrote a letter to the New York Times… It stated that the Israeli political party resembled the Nazi Party in its ideology and methods. Einstein went on to say that he opposed the state of Israel and it was against the religion of Judaism

Albert Einstein passionately argued against the creators and creation of Israel. He called it a terrorist organisation.

Albert Einstein Letter to The New York Times published December 4, 1948

Internet Archive  pg 2-3

https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948/page/n1/mode/2up

Topics

Einstein, Arendt, anti-fascism, Zionism, Palestine, Irgun, Israel

CNN: Israeli settlers storm village in West Bank and kill at least 1 Palestinian.

From CNN staff [Friday April 12th 2024]

A view of damaged houses and burning vehicles after a raid by Israeli settlers on a town near Ramallah, West Bank on April 12. Issam Rimawi/Anadolu/Getty Images

Hundreds of armed Israeli settlers stormed a village in the occupied West Bank on Friday, setting fire to several homes and cars — and leaving at least one Palestinian dead — in one of the largest attacks by settlers this year, according to Palestinian officials. 

The settlers attacked Al-Mughayyir village, east of Ramallah, raided homes and fired gunshots at residents, according to Amin Abu-Alia, the head of the village council. Videos obtained by CNN show parts of the village burning, with smoke billowing over several buildings and settlers lobbing rocks. Houses and cars are seen completely burnt up, with sounds of gunfire and clashes heard in the background.

Here are other headlines you should know:

• More Israeli attacks: An Israeli airstrike early Friday killed at least 29 people and injured dozens more after troops targeted a house belonging to the well-known Al-Tabatibi family in eastern Gaza City, according to a local health official. Israeli forces also surrounded and attacked the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, wounding several journalists and at least one other person. And in the occupied West Bank, troops killed two Hamas members in a raid on the city of Tubas, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.

READ MORE    https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-04-13-24/index.html?tab=Catch%20Up

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Palestinian artist: Ibrahim Hijazi- “Arab Village- Galilee”

Palestinian artist: Ibrahim Hijazi

Instagram: hijazi.iba  https://www.instagram.com/hijazi.iba/

“Arab Village- Galilee”