The world may meet to talk about so-called “peace in the Middle East”, but for us in the West Bank, those are empty words. We’ve heard them too many times before. Every agreement, every promise, every so-called deal ends the same way for us: more pain, more loss, less control over our land and our lives.

As Palestinians, we can’t believe in these deals anymore. How can we, when we’ve seen what happens after every one of them? When the same countries that speak about peace supply Israel with the weapons and money for its war crimes? When these countries rebrand the ongoing genocide in Gaza as a ceasefire without taking any action towards an actual stop to Israel’s brutality? They say their “military aid” is for “defence”, but why is the occupier’s “defence” synonymous with the destruction of our homes, our families, and our future?  

The suffering continues every single day in both Gaza and the West Bank. As I am generations deep in the West Bank, I can speak about my experience here. 

We live surrounded by soldiers, checkpoints, and invading settlers. The settlers and soldiers destroy our homes, schools, and infrastructure, and yet it is our people who are arrested. It’s hard to talk about peace when we have never known peace; when the settlers can walk freely but we can’t. While the world is told that Israel’s violence has come to an end, we still seek justice, dignity and freedom to live without fear, as humans on our own land. 


In the wake of the “ceasefire”, we fear that the soldiers who left the West Bank to perpetrate genocide in Gaza have now returned even more cruel and senseless than before, intent on continuing the campaign of ethnic cleansing here.  

We’ve started to see signs of this in our villages and cities as settlers attack us with the support of the Israeli occupation forces. This, of course, is not something new – it is decades of suffering that only increases and intensifies. 

The numbers reflect what we already know to be true. The UN recorded more attacks in October than they had in any single month since they began tracking settler violence in 2006. By the end of November, the number of attacks in all of 2025 had already more than doubled the total from 2024. 

The army has made the situation across the West Bank even worse over the last week. In Jenin, Israeli forces summarily executed two Palestinian men, Al-Muntasir Billah Abdullah and Youssef Asasa, during a raid. A video clearly shows that the men had their hands up and were following instructions. Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has since promoted the commander of the border police unit responsible for the murders.

The army also launched a massive attack on the city of Tubas and the nearby villages of Aqqaba and Tayaseer. In just four days, they wounded over 200 people, detained more than 200, tore up roads, and destroyed village water networks.  

In Masafer Yatta, where I live, settlers from the Havat Ma’on outpost have intensified their harassment since the beginning of October. In the village of Sarura, for example, the settlers forcibly entered a cave belonging to the Alemoor family, placed their belongings inside, and barred the family from entering or even approaching. It's important to note that the family is in the cave only because occupation forces previously demolished their homes and prevented any rebuilding.


The colonisers not only invaded the Alemoors’ home, but also erected a tent nearby as part of their expanding takeover. All this happened while soldiers and police stood by, and in some cases, actively supported the settlers by declaring the area a “closed military zone”, ejecting activists and residents while the settlers remained. 

In another incident, the settlers threatened us with death and displayed guns. We take them seriously when they do this; it’s not a fairy tale – it's our real lives.


Just as the occupiers target our homes, they also target our economic lifelines. According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, there have been 259 attacks against olive-harvesters so far this year: 218 of them by settlers and 41 by the army. They will attack anybody, no matter their age or gender; old women and young children are all made targets by the Israeli occupation. 

The settlers and soldiers also cut off farmers from their groves by bulldozing, lighting on fire, and stealing hundreds of ancient trees. Restricted access combined with low rainfall has made this one of the weakest harvests in the last fifteen years. 

When we celebrate life, they demonise it. When we breathe, they retaliate. There is nothing we love more than our land, and so the Palestinian olive harvest should be a time of joy. It should be filled with hard work, togetherness, and time to celebrate our ancestral bounty. The reality, though, is now bleak and frightening, as settler violence is escalating precisely when access to our land is vital. More than that, the destruction of the harvest and the dispossession of the Alemoor family fit the same broader pattern: they are trying to deny us our lives. 

All of this is happening under a deafening international silence — and here I speak specifically about governments. The brutal genocide that is still happening in Gaza, and the forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, daily land theft, and relentless occupation that continues to unfold in the West Bank are not isolated incidents: they are ongoing crimes against humanity. Yet the world’s political powers remain silent, their inaction serving as approval for these atrocities to continue and even expand.

We do not need empty statements or symbolic gestures. We want more than the decades-late recognition of Palestine as a state.

What we demand is an end to the occupation, an end to the apartheid policies that strip us Palestinians of our land, our homes, and our dignity. What we demand is freedom — real freedom to live our lives.▼