A Jewish Israeli activist defending Palestinian human rights has warned of an increase in attacks forcing people from their homes in the West Bank - miles away from Hamas’s stronghold in Gaza.
Sahar Vardi, 33, told The News Movement that groups of Israeli settlers who see the fallout from the October 7 massacre as an “opportunity” are targeting villages and farms in the occupied territory and forcing families to flee.
Sahar, who was jailed at age 18 for refusing to serve in the Israeli military, said that the settlers are often reservists in the army and many have been given uniforms and weapons.
Reports from across the West Bank, where Hamas has very little presence and no political influence, indicate a sharp increase in violence by Israeli settlers, as well as heightened Israeli army activity.
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Speaking from her home in Jerusalem, Sahar told TNM that she is one of a number of Jewish Israelis who use their privilege to defend Palestinians using a non-violent tactic known as “protective presence”. “We as Israeli Jews have more privileges, because if we are get arrested then we have to be released within 24 hours, while Palestinians will stay much longer in prison, because we speak the language, we speak Hebrew, so we can communicate differently to soldiers, to the settlers.
“So we try to use all that privilege to allow Palestinians to shepherd, or if it's just be in their communities."
Israeli forces had killed 192 Palestinians, including 40 children, in the West Bank in 2023 prior to the October 7 massacre, according to the charity Human Rights Watch. The figures make this year the deadliest year since recording began in 2005.
The health ministry for the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, estimates that more than 300 Palestinians have been killed there since October 7.
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The attack in southern Israel, in which Hamas militants broke out of Gaza and murdered 1,200 men, women and children led to more than two months of Israeli bombing and a ground invasion which together have killed an estimated 20,000 people in Gaza and flattened more than half of the homes.
Speaking about the forced displacement and violence against Palestinians, Sahar said that extremist religious Israelis have been using it to further their own aims and that more than a dozen small communities had been driven from their homes.
“All civilians, Israeli civilians, that were moved into lands that were occupied in [the Six Day War of] 1967, so in this case to the West Bank, are legally, by international law, settlers. But there are also what we call ideological settlers. But there are also what we call ideological settlers.
“I think what is really terrifying to see right now is that you see a lot of leaders in this community who are saying that the massacre that happened on October 7th is, for them an opportunity to actually go through with kind of the plan or what were they were hoping for in the first place, which is just having a Jewish and a Jewish only land, from the river to the sea, the entire biblical land.”