Christian village loses residents

[West Bank, from A1]

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SOME families have left Taybeh, West Bank, due to security and economic woes.

(MAYA ALLERUZZO For The Times)

nothing,” Hanna said. “If we don’t get support, be it social, political, economic, we'll be extinct soon.”

Life as a Palestinian near the settlements has long been difficult in this bucolic portion of the West Bank, where the olive groves covering the hills are the sites of regular confrontations between Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers. The confrontations have become increasingly lethal, with more than 1,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and armed settlers since the Hamas-led onslaught in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the United Nations.

Although the war in Gaza is abating, extremist settler groups such as the so-called Hilltop Youth have doubled down on their unprecedented — and increasingly effective — campaign of harassment and land-grabbing that has hit all Palestinians, regardless of religion or political affiliation.

This year the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, tallied more than 1,000 attacks in the West Bank through August, putting it on track to be the most violent on record.

And the scope of the intimidation campaign is increasing: The olive harvest in October featured 126 attacks on Palestinians and their property in 70 West Bank towns and villages; it was almost three times the number of attacks and double the communities targeted during 2023’s harvest. More than 4,000 olive trees and saplings were vandalized, the highest number in six years, OCHA says.

Almost half of those attacks have been in Ramallah governorate, which encompasses Taybeh and a slew of communities contending with intensifying violence from settlement outposts — that is, encampments set up by settlers in rural parts of the West Bank that are illegal under Israeli law but often protected by the authorities.