Sudetenland Tales by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Sudetenland Tales

Page 499

Emboldened “settlers” have set up illegal outposts closer to the town. A makeshift sign written in Hebrew erected outside the ancient town in June read; “There is no future for you here.”

David Khoury, the leader of Taybeh’s Greek Orthodox Church, also fears an exodus.

“The ‘settlers’ are making problems for us every day. Assaulting, vandalizing, terrorizing, terrifying our families, destroying our fields of olive trees, damaging our properties,” he said.

There were more than 750 incidents of settler violence recorded in the first half of this year, up from 216 for the whole of 2023, according to the United Nations.

Israeli settler settlers have grazed their cattle at the church, in what residents said is a desecration of the holy site.

The “settler” community is seizing the moment to annex land Israel has not occupied since the 1967 Six Day War, encouraged by hard right ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, including Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, who come from settler backgrounds.

The Israeli settlers first attacked Taybeh, northeast of Ramallah; the de facto capital of the Palestinian territory,