When Israeli security forces suddenly arrived with bulldozers and a demolition team to tear down Mahmoud Mahmud Jibril Nawaja’s house, they came with little explanation. “This land does not belong to you,” the officer in charge told him as he handed Nawaja a demolition order. They accused him of building on land without a permit, although his family has owned the plot for generations.
Nawaja had applied for one, providing the land deeds and other ownership documents, but had heard nothing from the authorities for years, until they arrived that day in June. The Nawajas, a family of seven, moved into a tent next to the rubble of their destroyed home, with the tracks of the bulldozers still visible in the earth around them. The same security forces soon returned and demolished the tent one morning as they ate breakfast.
“These demolitions are equal to death. They are killing us, but just in a different way,” said Nawaja. He and his family are just some of the 2,155 Palestinians the UN across the West Bank in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, when Hamas militants attacked towns and kibbutzim around Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking almost 250 hostage.
As an Israeli assault has ripped Gaza apart, killing almost 40,000 people, the West Bank has suffered another form of sweeping violence, including mass displacement, settler attacks and a marked land grab by the Israeli government. In June, leaked comments by Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotric.