Last October, Palestinian grandmother Ayesha Shtayyeh says a man pointed a gun at her head and told her to leave the place she had called home for 50 years.
She said he armed threat was the culmination of an increasingly violent campaign of harassment and intimidation that began in 2021, after an illegal settler outpost was established close to her home in the occupied West Bank.
The number of these outposts has risen rapidly in recent years. There are currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year - more than in any previous year.
The outposts - which can be farms, clusters of houses, or even groups of caravans - often lack defined boundaries and are illegal under both Israeli and international law.
But documents showing that organisations with close ties to the Israeli government have provided money and land used to establish new illegal outposts.
“A land without a people for a people without a land”
Good lord this makes my blood boil. I’m still in awe of the support being shown by ordinary people around the world these last few months but I don’t think I’ll ever grasp how much hatred is required to keep the machine running.
To think that if history went differently I could just get on a cab and visit the Holy Land like my grandmother did as a kid. Instead I get to watch it get bombed to bits in real time with the excuse that there wasn’t anyone there and if there were any they’re terrorists.