In the spring of 2008, during a walk around Ramallah, the veteran Palestinian lawyer, writer and stone-walled hiker Raja Xehadeh pointed out the row houses of Dolev, the illegal Israeli settlement looming on the horizon: “ Sometimes I let myself be taken back 15 or 20 years, to when I could walk here without anxiety”, he said at the time. An armored vehicle of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) traveled along a new road with exclusive access for Jewish settlers. “Soon we won’t be able to walk around here”.
Fifteen years later, Xehadeh’s worst predictions – at 72 years old and with a dozen books published – have come true. “If you come now, you won’t even recognize it,” he says in a telephone interview at the end of January. There are many more settlements around Dolev and some of the settlers are very violent. It is already almost impossible to walk in the area, “explains Xehadeh, who in his latest book, A Palestinian memoir (Profile, 2022) tells the story of the occupation of Palestine by Israel from the first mass expulsion of more than 400,000 Palestinians, the so-called nakba, in 1948.
When Xehadeh agreed to a walk for a report published in La Vanguardia, there were about 60 homes in Dolev. Now there are almost 800. When there was a bomb attack in the settlement in 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would double the number of homes. 380 units were built in Dolev in 2022 alone.
It’s just one example of a relentless expansion of illegal settlements that accelerated last year when more than 1,000 Palestinian families were evicted from their land to pave the way for settlers.
Since the attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, expulsions have been almost daily, with a balance of more than 300 Palestinians dead in four months.
There are real estate bets amid the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands. “Now, when you drive along the road that connects Dolev to the coast, you find large posters announcing the sale of properties in the settlement,” says Xehadeh. “The settlers acquired the homes earlier, at lower prices; then they sell them and pocket a lot of money”.
Historically, thousands of Jews from the US and Europe have settled in Palestinian territories, a process of illegal occupation that intensified after the so-called Oslo peace accords in 1993, when the number quadrupled of settlements “The idea is to make them think that they are in Israel and not in Palestine”, says Xehadeh. About 700,000 Israelis live illegally in the West Bank and are growing every day.
The lands of the Palestinians are currently distributed among the settlers under supposed property rights backed by biblical mythology. The Israelites expelled 3,000 years ago are represented by “Jewish individuals wherever they are”, according to Israeli law.
“Before, the rabbis said they shouldn’t sit because it violated the law,” explains Xehadeh. “Then, the floodgates opened; many more settlers, Orthodox, arrived in the West Bank”. Xehadeh foresaw the coming disaster for the Palestinians four decades ago. After seeing the maps of the Israeli army’s plan number 50 of 1984, it became clear that the military “intended to build a superior network of water, electricity and road infrastructure that would connect the settlements.”
This had an obvious goal: the total dependence of Palestine on Israel. “I panicked because I realized it would be a very dangerous situation. At any moment they could deprive us of everything without harming their own people; and that’s exactly what happened. We are in an apartheid state”.
Since October 7, the danger is even more immediate. “Now the Israeli military enters Ramallah at any time of the day or night to arrest people or to demolish homes.”
However, Xehadeh – known internationally for the legal defense he practices of human rights in Palestine – says he does not suffer for his safety. “I’m no longer an activist and because of my age I don’t think I’m white.”
Although the current massacre in the Gaza Strip has been characterized as a second nakba, Xehadeh doubts that Israel can expel the Palestinians. “The Israelis have been looking for a way to get rid of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza for a long time – he says – but I think it’s a false hope for them. The nakba cannot be repeated”.
This means that, if Israel does not look for a modus vivendi, “it will continue to live next to a ticking time bomb”. “The Israelis will not win by crushing the Palestinians, and we Palestinians will never be able to drive the Israelis out. The only way to win is for both peoples to win”, he concludes.
