The large metal gate of the Abu Alia family compound, in the West Bank village of al Mughayyir, resisted the onslaught of the settlers, most of them teenagers; its bars resonated with each blow as they hit it again and again with their clubs.
But the insults hurled by both sides that day freely passed through the bars.
One particularly offensive insult—almost identical in both Hebrew and Arabic—was uttered with contempt by the young Israelis pounding on the door, and with fear and frustration by the Palestinian man who stood mere inches away from them on the other side, recording the incident on his phone.
This gate, located on the outskirts of al Mughayyir, has become a front line every week in the fight for the occupied West Bank.
And this type of settler attack on Palestinian homes is a weekly routine in villages across the territory.
When we arrived at al Mughayyir that day, the confrontation at the Abu Alia compound had already begun.
The Israeli army and border police were already roaming the streets, and residents were fleeing from them; Here, soldiers, like settlers, are considered enemies.
Some youths blocked the road with stones, while the sound of gunshots echoed over the village.
On the hill overlooking the site, the local mosque called on people to help the family trapped by the settlers.
But eluding Israeli soldiers has become a dangerous gamble.
Residents, medical staff and journalists have been shot during Israeli military operations in the West Bank.
This is what is considered a normal weekend in al Mughayyir and other West Bank villages today, although it rarely makes it into the local news.
We spent a week around al Mughayyir and the neighboring village of Khirbet Abu Falah to see what life was like there for a specific community, or even a single family.
What we found shows how quickly control of this territory is changing and how local settler attacks are just the visible tip of a national project aimed at bringing West Bank lands under Israeli control.
A long tension
Since Israel's occupation of the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East war, more than 100 settlements housing more than half a million Jews have been built on land that the Palestinians claim for a future state.
Some Israeli settlers have also established hundreds of unauthorized outposts, often starting with a single tent or caravan on a hill, and often in close proximity to Palestinian homes.
Both official settlements and these outposts are illegal under international law.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described those carrying out these attacks as a small group of misguided youth: he has called them “150 juvenile delinquents” or “70 teenagers from broken homes.”
The settlers knocking on the Abu Alias' door that Saturday in al Mughayyir appeared to be mainly teenagers.
However, earlier that same day, a group of settlers had spread a call on social media to “expel the enemy,” accompanied by a quote from the Torah:
“If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, those you leave will become thorns in your eyes and stings in your sides,” it read.
And behind the young faces at the door were much older settlers - at least one armed - standing alongside Israeli soldiers a short distance from the house.
It is widely believed among Palestinians living in the West Bank that Israeli soldiers support the settlers during these attacks.
Footage of the confrontation, filmed by the Abu Alia family, shows soldiers calmly approaching the teenagers who were attacking the door and trying to gently push them away.
It was not effective: the young men returned again and again to beat the door with their sticks, while a woman inside yelled at them to leave.
The soldiers who remained with them made no attempt to interrogate or detain the attackers, or even to confiscate their weapons.
Other images, also recorded from the family compound, appear to show young settlers breaking the property's fences while soldiers watch from a short distance, without helmets and using their mobile phones.
In a photograph you can see what appears to be a power tool for cutting metal, resting on pieces of wood behind them.
Later we photographed it in the hands of soldiers, then in the hands of settlers and later again in the hands of soldiers next to the Abu Alia fence.
We asked the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) about these incidents.
They did not offer a concrete explanation, although they said they were investigating claims of property damage.
A known method
Rafeeq Abu Alia, one of the family members who was in the house that day, explained to me that the attack followed a familiar pattern.
"First thing in the morning they came. There were four settlers and they were armed. Then more settlers arrived and laid siege to the house, insulting us and provoking us," he said.
"They came with the army. The soldiers entered first and the settlers followed them. The army beat people inside the house," he added.
We filmed soldiers trying to break down the Abu Alia's door while the settlers stood by their side. Later we saw workers repairing the damaged entrance.
Medical personnel told us that several Palestinians were treated for tear gas inhalation and injuries from beatings, and that another person was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound.
The IDF told us that its operatives were in al Mughayyir that day responding to reports of a clash between Palestinians and Israeli civilians.
According to their version, soldiers entered a house in the village looking for stone-throwing suspects and, separately, detained a person who was participating in what they described as a “violent disturbance.”
They also said they were investigating allegations of violence by soldiers.
They also stated that hooded Palestinians used slingshots to throw stones at the troops, that their forces opened fire to neutralize the threat, and that “a hit was identified,” an expression used to indicate that someone was hit by gunfire.
The rules of engagement for Israeli forces in the West Bank were relaxed after Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, allowing the use of live fire against stone-throwing Palestinians.
Our repeated requests to accompany the IDF on patrols in the West Bank this year have not received a response so far.
Repeated attacks
As Israeli forces fired live ammunition, stun grenades and tear gas rounds at al Mughayyir that day, we walked along a largely deserted road toward the Abu Alia compound to see the situation firsthand.
Two soldiers appeared in front of us, a few meters away. Our local Palestinian producer was the first to notice their presence.
We were still filming when one of them raised his gun and pointed it at us.
We headed to the roof of a nearby building to get to safety; The military vehicle and soldiers were clearly visible just below us.
Within seconds of arriving, they motioned for us to stop recording. One of them pointed a tear gas launcher at us. We move away from the edge of the roof.
He never fired.
Access to stories like this is increasingly difficult here, even for journalists with official Israeli government accreditation.
Palestinian paramedics say they are also routinely prevented from entering.
A Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance worker told me that while responding to a call from al Mughayyir that same week during another settler attack, Israeli soldiers took the keys to his vehicle after ordering him to turn off the engine.
“If they tell us to stay there, we have to stay and wait, regardless of the situation,” he noted.
“It's something we continually face.”
God's land
Al Mughayyir is an isolated village, surrounded by areas that were temporarily brought under full Israeli control in the Oslo Accords 30 years ago.
That peace process later ended up collapsing.
In recent years, Israeli settlement outposts - illegal under both Israeli and international law - have proliferated around it.
A member of the village council, a man known as Abu Waheed, told me that settlers enter al Mughayyir every day and that when the settlers order something to the soldiers, they obey.
“They come with the army and in army vehicles,” he said.
"Here, here and here. The army is the settlers, only they wear green," he said.
Many of the Israeli soldiers stationed in this area are also settlers and consider the West Bank as a land that God has given them.
Thousands of settlers were also recruited directly to local security teams following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and received weapons after a minimal screening and training process.
According to army data, most of these teams have since been dismantled, after multiple complaints of abuses against Palestinian residents were registered.
None of the outposts we visited around al Mughayyir responded to our request to speak to them.
However, a settler from a nearby outpost recently spoke to an Israeli documentary crew about his work on a security team.
“We are the residents and we are making a conquest here,” Adar Lafair told the Kan 11 documentary team.
"We are settling on lands that years ago we would not have been able to walk on. We would not have dared to do so. The Arabs controlled this area. But today we are here," he said.
His wife, Rivka, said she dreamed of these teams receiving permission to “conquer” a nearby Palestinian village.
Describing the creation of his outpost by Israeli settlers, he explained that control of the area was assumed by “a group of 17-year-old boys, with no weapons, with nothing.”
"They simply confronted others for the land. They simply showed who is boss. And we are the ones who rule this land," he said.
"It should not happen that some young people climb to the top of a hill and, in doing so, guarantee the safety of the entire people of Israel. It should be the army that clears the way," he added.
“I'll put a bullet in your head.”
An Israeli soldier who recently served in the West Bank told me that extremist settlers consider him an enemy for not supporting their attacks.
He asked us to hide his identity.
"There are teenagers there who look at you with hatred. There was one who told us: 'I will put a bullet in your head,'" he denounced.
He said it was clear the attacks were not the work of a few radical teenagers.
“There are organizations that provide them with this ideology, in addition to food, water, logistical support and also guidance on how to carry out these actions.”
Asked about claims by some settlers that Palestinian attacks against them are not covered or reported, he responded that this version does not correspond to the reality he has observed on the ground.
“In the faces of the Palestinians I only saw fear,” he said.
"I never saw fear in any Jew who lived there. They feel there is no law. They feel they can attack in broad daylight and nothing will happen."
During the week we were there, the UN counted 45 Palestinians injured by Israeli settlers in attacks carried out in different parts of the West Bank, including 12 minors.
According to the organization, injuries attributed to settler attacks have increased dramatically to more than three per day since the beginning of this year.
Settler attacks have increased as the number of settlement outposts has also grown.
These outposts are officially illegal under Israeli law, but that hasn't stopped Israel from supporting them by building roads and providing electricity, or legalizing dozens of them once established.
The Israeli organization Peace Now, which monitors settlement expansion, claims that at least 231 new outposts have been created so far under the current Israeli government.
According to this organization, some of them, used as livestock farms managed by settlers, de facto control 18% of the West Bank and have caused the displacement of more than 100 Palestinian communities.
At a conference of settler leaders in July, IDF West Bank commander Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth said agricultural outposts “fit well” with Israel's security concept, “as long as this is also reflected in operational conduct, as well as ethical conduct, and in accordance with the law.”
“All this greatly reinforces security,” he declared.
Strong investments
According to Peace Now, the current Israeli government has so far allocated 19 billion shekels ($6.2 billion) to settlement expansion in the West Bank and is now seeking an additional 600 million shekels ($196 million) for settlement-related programs.
The government, which includes settlers from the national-religious movement among its ministers, has also lifted a 20-year ban that prevented Israeli citizens from settling in areas near the Palestinian city of Jenin, in the far north of the territory.
It is also promoting the construction of more than a dozen settlements in that area, in addition to several new military sites, including one next to the Jenin refugee camp.
This is the first time that Israel has expropriated land for a military installation in an area that, according to the Oslo Accords, came under exclusively Palestinian control.
Hagit Ofran of Peace Now argues that the speed of construction in Jenin is part of a broader race by the Israeli government to expand settlements in the West Bank before elections scheduled for October in Israel.
In addition, it says that Israel is also finding mechanisms to channel public funds to settler outposts that were illegal under Israeli law, through allocations for roads, “security needs” or the creation of “temporary sites” in new areas reserved for future settlements.
In Khirbet Abu Falah, right next to al Mughayyir, Brahim Hamayel, an olive farmer whom I met during another settler attack a year ago, told me that four new outposts have since appeared nearby, two of them in the past month alone.
He pointed out one of them to me on a nearby hill; He said it was built on private Palestinian land, in an area that should be administered by the Palestinian Authority.
And the attacks have also increased, he added, sometimes even targeting the village itself during the night.
“Since we met last year, the attacks have moved from our farmlands to our homes,” he lamented.
And he added: "All my neighbors have been harmed in one way or another; some have had their houses or cars burned. We are installing barbed wire to protect ourselves, as if our houses have become prisons."
As we talked, we saw smoke rising from the fields of the village and also saw several settlers moving through the smoldering fields.
An Israeli military vehicle quickly arrived on the scene, but it did not prevent the settlers from starting a second fire or from passing them and heading back towards one of the new outposts that Brahim had pointed out to me.
This road that crosses their lands, increasingly monitored from the outposts of settlers located in the surroundings, has become a kind of risk corridor for farmers in the area, who must travel it at full speed in their vehicles, without stopping or getting out of them.
It is the only open route between Khirbet Abu Falah and al Mughayyir. On two occasions when we drove through it we saw an Israeli settler sitting in the empty fields.
A week after the attack in al Mughayyir, Palestinian residents were still paying the price for what happened.
Fadi Hamdallah al Nassan, 17, who was shot in the leg that day, died from his injuries.
A player for the Palestinian youth soccer team, his coffin was carried through the streets of the village before his burial.
The next day, two more Palestinians were killed in a new attack by settlers nearby.
Another weekend in the occupied West Bank: roads closed, land confiscated, villages under siege and families torn apart.
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