Israeli settlers assaulted 79-year-old Ibrahim al-Jabour and his family in the village of Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank, the latest in an escalating wave of settler violence that has surged since the war in Gaza began.
Al-Jabour described how a group of armed settlers attacked him, his children, and his grandchildren while they were on their land in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron. The elderly Palestinian sustained injuries to his head and body during the assault. He was transferred to hospital for treatment.
“What did we do to them? This is our land. We have been here for generations,” al-Jabour told reporters from his hospital bed.
The attack is part of a broader pattern. In recent days, settlers have rampaged through Palestinian villages across the West Bank, uprooting olive trees, burning fields, and assaulting residents, often under the protection of the Israeli army. In a separate incident, settlers attacked the Bedouin community of al-Mufaqarah in the same area, beating livestock and killing two sheep.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has documented a sharp increase in settler violence since the war in Gaza began in March 2025. The Israeli military has occasionally intervened to stop settler attacks, but in many cases soldiers stand by or actively protect the settlers, Palestinians and human rights groups say.
Masafer Yatta is a cluster of villages in the southern West Bank that has been a focal point of settler violence for years. The Israeli government has designated much of the area a “firing zone,” a legal classification that Palestinians say is used to justify the expulsion of residents and the expansion of nearby settlements.
The international community considers Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank illegal under international law. The Biden administration described them as inconsistent with international law, though enforcement has been minimal. Trump officials have taken a far more permissive stance, effectively greenlighting settlement expansion.
Al-Jabour’s case has drawn attention because of his age and the brutality of the attack. But for Palestinians in the West Bank, it is one assault among many in a slow-motion dispossession that has accelerated sharply over the past year.
“The world watches what happens in Gaza,” al-Jabour said. “But what happens here every day, the beatings, the stealing of land, the uprooting of trees, nobody sees.”