This week there was another attack on a religious institution. No, not in Australia but in the ancient Christian village of Taibeh, a Palestinian village in the Occupied West Bank.

This village, known in the Christian Gospel of John as Ephraim, was attacked by a gang of white-shirted fascist Israeli setters protected and supported by the Israeli Defence Forces. These settlers have been terrorising the villagers, preventing farmers accessing their lands and destroying olive groves, their only source of income. The settlers have been bringing their cattle to graze in the village every day from their newly established settler outposts nearby.

This week they set fires near an ancient archaeological site, the ruins of the fifth-century Church of Al-Khader (St. George), revered by three strands of Christianity: Latin, Greek Orthodox and Melkite. While there has been a slight flurry of media covering this event, we have yet to hear any substantial outcry from the world’s estimated 2.4 billion Christians.

We all watch these events on our phones as a genocide in Gaza continues unabated, as more than 800 people are killed or wounded trying to get food from the American Israeli killing food posts, as starvation is rampant and children die of hunger and innocents are bombed in their flimsy tents on the beach. Anyone with a moral compass remaining seethes with anger, disgust, horror and disbelief at this genocide and at the lack of action by their governments, including our own.

Meanwhile, the execution of mass demolition orders, previously issued by the Israeli occupying forces of refugee camps goes on in the Occupied West Bank largely unseen and unreported. The camps of Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin have all been attacked and hundreds of camp houses demolished during May and June this year using American-made Caterpillar bulldozers. More than 70,000 refugees from these camps are now homeless. Bedouin have also been forcibly expelled from their ancestral fields. The historic 36 Bedouin communities, with a total population of 12,000, has now been reduced to 3000. The recent forced displacement of the Al Mu’arrajat East community on 2 July illustrates the crisis facing the Palestinian herding communities in Area C.

Ongoing and more violent attacks in other communities, such as the Susiya community, where settlers are a law unto themselves, are causing great harm to these communities. The theft of water resources and settler attack on homes and villages across the area continues unabated

The UN body OCHA reports that in the first week of July there have been 27 serious settler attacks against Palestinians injuring more than 40. In the outskirts of Sinjil town and Jiljiliya village Palestinians have been attacked at least five times in the same period damaging homes, vehicles and agricultural structures. In Jiljiliya, Molotov cocktails and stones thrown by settlers damaged three houses and set fire to an electrical supply unit.

Ambulances have also been blocked by settlers. So far this year, 350 people have been injured with over half of these being children. This is all part of Israel’s plan not only to create a concentration camp for more than half a million Palestinians in Rafah in Gaza but to destroy all means necessary for sustainable life for Palestinians in the West Bank including homes, agricultural fields, water and access to income.

The impact of this strangulation on the population of the West Bank is highlighted in a recent World Vision report, The Unseen Crisis released on 5 July this year that noted the increase in hunger and poverty in the West Bank with:

• 74% of families now live below the minimum standard of living – increased from 21% just one year ago.
• 70% of children are frequently skipping meals due to rising food insecurity.
• 9% of children have dropped out of school, many because their families can no longer afford it or need them to work.
• There has been a 950% increase in the number of families reporting that a member had gone a full day without eating since 2022.

This situation has developed largely due to the complete closure of the West Bank from Israel from October 2023 and the creation of cantons across the Territory by building iron gates at the entrance to the towns and villages. This action has stopped the movement of commerce, access to education and to health care and social and historic ties. Across the West Bank there are 110 such new gates. Some of these gates have now become permanent and others operate with very arbitrary opening times.

There are also more Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley, that once comprised 30% of the West Bank and was a key component of its agricultural economy. Settlers have not only confiscated land but have also attacked and destroyed key water resources including historic Palestinian springs. As a result Palestinian farmers have had to resort to artisan basin water, now very salty. And on June 11th the water lines to several villages were also cut.

After 7 October 2023, those Palestinians who had been working in Israel were banned from entering the country and businesses previously co-operating with Israel businesses were immediately cut off. Farmers now have great difficulty accessing their lands for agriculture, and internal commerce has come to a halt. The Palestinian Authority has no money to pay salaries, being denied the income from taxes that Israel collects in the West Bank.

Also Palestinians from 1948, those Israeli Palestinians who had previously come to the West Bank for trade, a sizeable source of income in the West Bank, are unable to cross through closed checkpoints. The market economy of the West Bank has all but collapsed making life for families exceptionally difficult.

In Bethlehem the economic situation is now in greater crisis due to the lack of tourism that has previously sustained the community. While such tourism had previously been deteriorating due to the majority of tourists being brought to the city by Israeli bus companies, the closure of the city has made the situation more critical. Also many farmers who owned agricultural fields around Bethlehem and who had gone to Israel to find more profitable work have returned to find their fields occupied by settlers supported by military checkpoints. Bethlehem has been described as “just one of the many jails in the West Bank”.

These are all part of a clear strategy to ensure that there is no opportunity for the establishment of a Palestinian homeland. Israeli authorities now recognised 22 new settlements with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on 28 May describing this as a “strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”.

Area C, designated under the Oslo Accords as part of a future Palestinian State, had largely been taken over by settlers with Israeli settlers now controlling 80% of the area. In recent conversations with West Bank Palestinians they hear these comments and see the actions taken by the IDF and settlers and while holding on to hope for action by the international community, they fear that annexation is imminent.

The reaction of the Europeans and the Security Council in meetings in June to these measures were predictable. The EU stated on 25 June “its strong condemnation of the escalation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, following increased settler violence, [and] the expansion of illegal settlements and Israel’s military operation”. And the UN Security Council on 24 June noted the “increase in settlement expansion, land seizures, and settler violence in the territory”.

On 10 June, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK imposed sanctions on Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for inciting settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. But the hard truth is that, as it has been for the last 80 years, no action has been taken to stop the seizure of Palestinian land, and stop the genocide in Gaza and the slow strangulation of the Occupied West Bank. America keeps on arming and funding Israel, and Australia has yet to sanction Israel, stop its weapons sales and take any meaningfully action against Israel, a country now described by the majority of world citizens as a rogue state.

There is a tragic and sickening irony that a nation that grew out of the ashes of the Holocaust, a nation whose development was fully supported by world community through the United Nations is now slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, herding them into concentration camps in Gaza having levelled their homes with American bombs and Australian spare parts. That nation, with full impunity from Western governments, is still destroying the water, fields and sources of income across the Occupied West Bank, including at ancient Christian sites at a time when the world says “never again means never again” but refuses to say it for the Palestinians.

Inspite of all of this, as a Palestinian friend in Bethlehem said recently, “There is still hope, we have a strong attachment to the land, and a strong attachment to the soil and that attachment to the land sustains us. We know the seasons, we know the mountains, we are like indigenous people everywhere and we will survive.”

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.