‘We don’t have a life’: Palestinian shepherds struggle to graze amid growing settlements

Jibreen remembers the first time he saw an Israeli settler near his home. It was the 1990s; the man turned up, seemingly out of nowhere, and erected a tent on a nearby hill.
“There were Palestinians living all around,” Jibreen recalls. The locals contacted the police and army saying they wanted the man to leave, but they were told he was having a fight with his wife and a hard time; he needed a day or two and would go away. “After two weeks more people came with another tent and there was the presence of the army to secure them,” he says.
From that point, this area in the South Hebron Hills became a flashpoint in a much broader struggle, one that would dominate Jibreen’s life. “Us Palestinians asked the police to help us, but the police said the settlers are crazy, they can’t control them, and the Palestinians should move further away to be safer,” Jibreen says. “Our life became impossible.”
This land – a little more than an hour’s drive from Jerusalem – is rugged, dotted with rocks and so hilly that it is easy to see far into the distance.
The city of Yatta is visible, as are the Israeli settlements of Mitzpe Yair and Susiya. On the closest hill are the remains of Jibreen’s home, which was demolished by soldiers this summer.
It is to this region that a group of Israeli and international activists descend every Saturday, with the goal of helping Palestinian shepherds graze their sheep. The activists say they are not part of an organised group, but arrange things through messaging apps, and feel compelled to support Palestinians with their “sumud”, or “steadfastness” towards staying on their land.
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Jibreen – who asked to only go by his first name – has been a shepherd and farmer all his life, though he also picked oranges and worked as a plasterer in Israeli territory to make extra money. His family always lived in the same area. Thirty years ago, shepherds from here would walk the whole Jordan valley to the north. Today, they can barely move 500m, says Israeli peace activist and former soldier Yehuda Shaul.
Setting off on a recent Saturday morning, Jibreen explains that it is only with activists accompanying him that he dares to graze his flock. It takes about 15 minutes before an armed settler in a dark uniform appears on a hill above. The man seems to make a phone call. Soon, an army vehicle approaches from a far road; then two more.
Another shepherd, Ahmed, is visible grazing sheep on a hill opposite, also accompanied by activists. The armed security forces begin running towards them and they withdrew. Ahmed later says they threatened him with detention.
“Let them leave us [alone] for a bit,” says Wadha, Ahmed’s mother. His children get very scared when the soldiers come, she says. “They watch what is going on and sometimes they hide beyond the walls and in the corner.” Other relatives serve sweet tea, tomatoes, bread and kishek to the activists.
“The only principle is to harass Palestinians in any possible way. This has been consistent not just from the beginning of this war … for decades,” says Kobi Snitz, an Israeli involved in activism in the South Hebron Hills for the last 20 years because it’s his “basic moral duty”.
Guy Butavia, also Israeli, says he started coming more than 14 years ago, adding “I don’t have a choice”.. The activists always try to have someone filming so there is evidence of any abuse on the settler and security side, he says.
He believes peace won’t be possible without “intervention from outside”: sanctions or a “force from outside on the ground”.
According to anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, there were about 110,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank and 140,000 in East Jerusalem in 1993. There are now about 700,000 in the same areas, living across the territory that Palestinians hope can make up any future Palestinian state.
A recent report by the UN high commissioner for human rights said the “drastic acceleration” of “long-standing trends of discrimination, oppression and violence against Palestinians, that accompany Israeli occupation and settlement expansion” were “bringing the West Bank to the brink of catastrophe”. It said the current Israeli government’s policies “appear aligned, to an unprecedented extent, with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to expand long-term control over the West Bank”.
At the end of October last year, more than 30 organisations, including Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, Amnesty International Israel and Combatants for Peace signed a letter saying settlers were “exploiting the lack of public attention to the West Bank” in the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas attacks “to escalate their campaign of violent attacks in an attempt to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities”.
According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 585 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Israeli settlers or security forces between October 7th, 2023, and August 2024. In the same period, 18 Israelis were killed, the OCHA figures say.
On July 19th, the Hague-based International Court of Justice ruled in an advisory opinion that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip was illegal and should end as soon as possible.
But the ruling did not appear to change the behaviour of settlers or the fear felt by Palestinians, not least because, in the occupied West Bank, there are separate legal systems. Israeli settlers are judged under civilian law, while Palestinians live under military law – a fact that human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have argued is evidence of apartheid.
The escalation in attacks and demolitions has prompted renewed calls in Ireland to pass the Occupied Territories Bill, which would ban the importation and sale of goods and services produced in illegal settlements on occupied territory, including those in the West Bank. “Everyone knows that economic measures and sanctions are what matters here. Unless Israel faces real, tangible, material costs to its policies it will not change tack,” said Conor O’Neill, head of advocacy at Christian Aid Ireland.
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Jibreen built a house in 2012, after first living in a tent on top of a very old cave that his grandfather had used. He moved there after being chased away from another home he says was set on fire by Israelis. The tent was too hot in summer and too cold in winter, and an NGO helped him with the subsequent construction. He applied for a building permit three times, following all necessary procedures, he says, but it was not approved.
Ten days before we meet, bulldozers arrived, accompanied by the Israeli army, who said they were going to demolish what they called an “illegal structure”. A video shows a bulldozer levelling the home as onlookers are held back by heavily armed security forces. Photographs taken afterwards show Jibreen sitting on a rock, looking at the rubble that remained.
According to the OCHA, at least 11,199 Palestinian-owned structures have been demolished in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since 2009. On August 7th, 2024, the OCHA said the number of Palestinians displaced in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as a result of demolitions and confiscations, had more than doubled since October 7th, compared with the preceding 10 months, rising from 1,253 to 3,070.
“I can’t do anything,” Jibreen says. He stays in his uncle’s home, unwilling to go back to the site of his house, because he is frightened of the settlers and the army. He has complained at the police station “200 times”, he says, but is convinced they will not support him and might make accusations against him instead. He says he has been beaten and had a gun held to his head by security forces, and even had to bail himself out one time when he went to make a complaint. The Israeli police did not respond to a request for comment.
Olive-picking season is usually between October and December, Jibreen says, but last year “no one from the whole area went”. As the season fell right after the October 7th Hamas-led attack on Israel, Palestinians were worried about their security. In previous years, Jibreen says, he produced 3,000kg of pickled olives from his own trees “and this year I didn’t even produce 1kg … I don’t have any connection to October 7th. I didn’t give [Hamas] anything. What do you want from me? I want to live my life in all my land”.
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Shaul, the peace activist and former soldier, says the Israelis have a strategy of pushing Palestinians into urban areas, particularly in areas A and B, and away from Area C, which covers about 60 per cent of the West Bank but is under the control of Israel. Shaul says they’re doing this partially through the “administrative grip that Israel has over Area C”, such as “denying building permits for Palestinians”.
There are some areas in the West Bank, he says, that Israel has designated as “firing zones”, or training zones for the army, and others now designated as archaeological sites. Access to water is being reduced. “There are basically endless tricks in the book, and ultimately you get to the same place where entire communities are under threat.”
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Asked about this, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokespman said areas used for shooting training were “designated as live-fire zones and are closed by security order from the commander of the central command, which is publicly announced”.
As the places they can graze livestock in are reduced, Palestinian shepherds need to buy more feed, increasing their expenses. They also overgraze the land they can access, speeding up desertification. The result is that “an entire culture and way of life is being erased”, Shaul says.
While Israeli soldiers have always protected settlers more than Palestinians, Shaul says, they’re increasingly seen taking part themselves in attacks on Palestinians – in part because thousands of settlers who were reservists have been called up in the West Bank, after more experienced soldiers were moved to Gaza. “There’s no even pretext of a buffer between violent settlers and Palestinians any more … settlers enjoy almost complete impunity,” says Shaul.
In a statement, an IDF spokesman denied that soldiers protected settlers more, saying the IDF “fulfils its duty to maintain public order, and the security of all the residents in the area, while dealing with IDF objectives” in the West Bank “and the complexities of the security situation”. He said the Israeli police were responsible for law enforcement in the cases of “violations by Israelis” in the West Bank, but IDF soldiers were required to stop violations and if necessary detain suspects until the police arrive.
He said cases of deviation from those orders, or incidences of violence by soldiers, are reviewed and responded to. “In cases that cross the criminal threshold, criminal investigations are also opened”.
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The spokesman said allegations that harassment was aimed at forcing Palestinians away from certain areas “is speculative and incorrect” and the allegation “does not represent the values of the IDF or the role of IDF troops operating in the area”.
The spokesman said that the suitability of reserve forces was regularly assessed and “if difficulties arise” they could be removed, reassigned or discharged.
Shaul considers the Israeli activists who protect Jibreen and the other shepherds to be “heroes” but, he says, the “anti-occupation camp in Israeli” is “obviously a minority”. “If our work was enough to lead [to] change, change would have come already.”
He says the “cost-benefit calculation of Israel [needs] to change before we can see change and that can happen in several ways: in violence and non-violence, [with] international pressure … I think people with privileges don’t just wake up in the morning and decide to give up their privileges because the sun is shining in the right direction”.
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Despite the solidarity he has experienced, Jibreen sees his future as bleak.
“We don’t have a life,” he says. “What’s going on here doesn’t happen anywhere else. My home demolished, I can’t go to my land, they didn’t leave anything … They humiliate me. Among the neighbours everyone has their own incidents and attacks … I ask for help from the world. It doesn’t make sense, it can’t continue like this.”