For generations, Keith Asad’s family has owned olive trees in the land near the West Bank town of Turmosayya, but now they are out of his reach.
The trees are still there.
He can see them, clearly, from the backyard of his house, tantalisingly close.
But he can’t go there. He’s too frightened, and with good reason.
Even though he lives in a town where crime is almost unknown, Keith has just installed a wall made of rigid metal spikes, and he’s considering adding barbed wire to the top of them.
He worries about the safety of his wife and children, but why?
Through the gaps between the spikes, we can see a group of vehicles and tents that have been set up in the valley beyond Keith’s house. He calls them his “unwanted neighbours”.
The rest of the world calls them settlers.
“We have some trees over there,” he says, pointing at his land. “This is the first year that we’re not even thinking about going over there.”
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‘Oh, we’ll be shot… guaranteed’
“What would happen if you went?” I ask, and the answer is immediate.
“Oh, we’ll be shot. That’s guaranteed. One hundred percent.”
This group arrived a few months ago, with just a couple of tents, a couple of cars and an air of menace.
Road blocks appeared, stopping the locals from reaching their ancestral land. Buildings were vandalised and weapons were brandished. And Keith says the Israeli police and military have done nothing to help.
He shows me the damage to a door left behind after Israeli soldiers came to the house in the early hours of one morning, searching it from top to bottom and refusing to explain why.
He feels besieged, and he knows it will get worse. Because more and more of these outposts are being set up in the West Bank, by Israelis who believe they have a historic, or biblical, right to the land.
They are illegal, under both Israeli and international law.
But it is almost unknown for Israeli authorities to do anything to stop them and there is a crop of Israeli politicians, including some in the cabinet, who are passionate about encouraging as many new outposts as possible.
Because over time, they grow, attracting more people.
Military to civilian occupation
Roads and houses are built, Palestinians are intimidated into leaving and eventually those little outposts morph into permanent settlements, signed off and approved by the Israeli government.
And gradually, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank becomes slightly less military and slightly more civilian.
For the Palestinians we spoke to, it feels like an invasion, fuelled by a sense that the settlers act and attack with impunity.
Between 2005 and 2024, only around 3% of police investigations into settler violence ended in conviction. And, of course, many attacks are never investigated.
‘Very, very nervous’
In the olive groves outside Turmosayya, Yasser Alqam is driving me along a rough track, looking warily from side to side.
“I feel very, very nervous,” he says. “I’m looking to my sides, on top of these hills, because, without any warning, stones can come down on your car.
“And it’s going to take you a while before you figure out which way they’re coming from.”
Yasser was here earlier in the month when he saw a horrendous attack, in which a settler, armed with a club dotted with nails, beat people – including a 53-year-old Palestinian woman called Afaf Abu Alia.
Video of her being attacked, and then, covered in blood, helped to a car to be taken to hospital, was put on social media and attracted widespread condemnation. So far, despite the video evidence, nobody has been arrested.
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Sky News confronted by Israeli troops
Yasser takes us to the site of the attack. As we film, an Israeli military vehicle comes along a track and stops in a cloud of dust.
The soldiers emerge and tell us we have to leave for our own protection, claiming that this olive grove is, in fact, a closed military zone.
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I ask who they are protecting us from, but there is no answer. I’m shown a WhatsApp image of a rudimentary rectangle on a map, and informed that this is a military order.
We’re then told we can’t leave, and that the police are on the way to arrest us. We discuss the law. And then, as suddenly as it started, it’s over – we’re free to go. It’s just another flare-up on the West Bank.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told us its mission was to thwart terrorism, and it said it strongly condemned violence of any kind. It said it would conduct a review of the attacks we have reported on here.
But the echoes of violence reverberate here. We go to visit Afaf, the woman who was so grievously attacked.
Her body is badly battered, and she has two blood clots on her brain, but she has been discharged from hospital and is sitting on a sofa, her family around her, frail but sure.
The song of defiance
“They beat me on my head, behind my ears, along my legs, my back, and my neck all over my body, everywhere,” she tells me.
“I was terrified. The first thing that came to my mind was my son – he’s getting married soon. All I could think was that I might never get the chance to celebrate.
“It’s our land. We stand our ground, and we are here to stay. We’re not going anywhere. I won’t give it up to setters. They can beat us all they want, they won’t break us.”
It is a refrain you hear repeatedly on the West Bank – the song of defiance. The olive farmers still come out, tending to their trees, aware that settlers, with their guns and their own belief that this land is rightly theirs, are lurking.
These valleys and fields are, at once, so tranquil, but also so very ominous and menacing.
