Inside a Coordinated, Multi-Village Settler-Soldier Program in the West Bank

February 6, 2026 Pam Rogers

“While unusual in scale and severity, this assault on Masafer Yatta is not unique. Even on the night preceding the attack, settlers raided Wadi Al-Rakhim, cutting down approximately 500 olive trees belonging to the Rumi family and spray-painting slogans describing the act as “revenge” for Karm Susya — a settler vineyard planted on land belonging to the Nawajah family. After years of legal proceedings, a court ruling had ordered the vineyard’s removal on the grounds that it had been established illegally.

The role of Israeli soldiers in Tuesday night’s highly coordinated assault was unmistakable. Throughout the evening, they established flying checkpoints, prevented residents from reaching the villages, blocked ambulances, and allowed settlers to carry out attacks and large-scale theft without interference — while arresting Palestinian victims without cause. In at least one instance, soldiers themselves took part in the beatings.”

Read the article here.

**An activist helps extinguish a fire set during a settler acct in Al-Tuban, Masafer Yatta, occupied West Bank, January 27, 2026. | Photo: Roni Amir / +972 Magazine**

The Street that Refuses to Die

February 6, 2026 Pam Rogers

This piece is part of A Day for Gaza, an initiative in which The Nation has turned over its website exclusively to voices from the Gaza Strip. You can find all of the work in the series here.

an excerpt:

“They want a land without people”

On the sidewalk sat Mohammad Mansour, 74, wrapped in a wool scarf despite the heat.

“Since the Balfour Declaration in 1917,” he began, “we’ve been living this occupation. They want a land without people. This genocide is their way of finishing the project.”

He listed what was destroyed: homes, schools, mosques. “They even turned it into a war on faith,” he said.

Before the war, $30 could fill his pantry. During the genocide, one kilo of onions cost $100. “Now prices go up and down like bombs,” he said.

He spoke of two people he’ll never forget: young Aref Abu Laban, who was killed while helping his mother pick lemons, and his old friend Mohammad al-Saidi, who had dreamed up the Colorful Block project that once made these walls bright. “He believed color could defeat despair,” Mansour said. “Now the walls are gray again, but the dream is still alive in my heart.”

“We live as if the war never stopped.”

I met Dunya Ashour, 19, when she was taking some photos of the destruction of the New Ajjami Mosque.

“I don’t feel the ceasefire,” she told me. “At night I still wake up to explosions two kilometers away, in the yellow zones. I can smell the gunpowder in the air.”

She lost her favorite teacher, Arij al-Maydana, as well as her grandfather, Jameel. “I carry their loss every day,” she said, “but I tell myself they’re in a better place.”