Maya Rosen
Jewish Currents / August 11, 2026
Last Wednesday night, some 40 Jewish settlers from the West Bank outpost of Havat Maon invaded the Palestinian village of Tuba, a small shepherding community in a remote region of Masafer Yatta. Over the course of about 15 minutes, they set fire to three homes; broke windows; smashed the solar panels that provide electricity to the community; burned both grape vines and the hay the village had bought to feed its sheep; threw stones at residents; and spray-painted graffiti around the community. The graffiti included a Jewish star on a piece of sheet metal and the word “revenge” on a water tank. Five residents of Tuba, including three children, were hospitalized for injuries sustained in the attack.
When I visited Tuba on Sunday, residents were still rattled. They told me how an 11-year-old boy had been asleep at home when settlers set it on fire and how his sister hid from the settlers in a bathroom, only barely managing to escape as smoke engulfed the house. They ticked off the items they had lost to the fires—children’s toys, school books, ID documents, eyeglasses. And they told me how the end of one attack only brings them closer to the next. “The next day, settlers were back harassing the family,” journalist and filmmaker Basel Adra, who lives in the nearby village of Tuwani and drove to Tuba while the attack was ongoing on Wednesday night to help, told me. “They burn the houses at night and they come in the morning to enjoy their actions.”
In villages across the West Bank, settler attacks have escalated dramatically since October 7th. In Tuba, there is the daily harassment—settlers come and graze their animals on Tuba residents’ land, open the water tanks to destroy the village’s supply, sit on the plastic chairs outside homes to taunt the inhabitants—and then there are the violent attacks: the property destruction, arson, stabbings, stone throwing, assaults of school children, and mass settler invasions.
Tuba’s remoteness—nearby settlement expansion has meant that the village can be accessed only via a rocky, unpaved path that’s not passable by most cars—makes it particularly vulnerable to settler attacks. But the reality is that the whole of Masafer Yatta remains under near-constant threat. Just hours before the attack on Tuba, settlers set fire to the agricultural land belonging to the nearby village of Khalet al-Daba’. The day before, the military demolished part of an elementary school in Shab al-Boutom, another village in the area. Three days later, on Saturday, armed settlers from the outpost of Or Yehuda entered the village of Wadi Rakhim and began shooting, hitting resident Mohammed Shannaran in the shoulder; settlers had already shot Shannaran’s two sons earlier this year, killing one and paralyzing the other. Not long after, in the early hours of Sunday morning, masked settlers entered the village of Umm Darit, poured gasoline over homes and furniture, and left the village in flames.
No images can capture the extent of the violence perpetrated each day across the West Bank. But the below photos and accounts from three residents who witnessed last week’s attacks in Tuba offer a glimpse of the terror and brutality waged by settlers and backed by soldiers. They represent one violent moment among countless others.
Salah Abu Jundiya: The settlers that night gathered on the hilltop, where they planted an Israeli flag two years ago. They ran down from there—dozens of settlers running down the hill. They attacked the whole community; they damaged and burned everything in front of our faces. There were 40 settlers, maybe more. Only about 70 people live in the village. Many people had left the village that night because of a wedding, so there were only ten men in the village at the time, and a couple dozen women and children.
They broke the windows of our home and destroyed the bathroom. There were eight people—my mother, sisters, sisters-in-law, and the children—inside the home, and the settlers smashed the windows and tried to pour gasoline in to set the house on fire with them inside. My father, my two brothers, and I were right outside the house, and we were able to prevent this, and we protected the house.
Ten minutes after the attack started, the settlers started walking back to the outpost, Havat Maon. The police arrived half an hour later. The moment they got out of the jeep, they saw an international solidarity activist, and the police left the fire burning and started to ask the solidarity activist about her passport and what she was doing here. The police have still done nothing against the attackers.
Since the settlers set up the flag on the hilltop, several attacks have originated from there. They gather on that hill, and then they run down to the community. They go to that hilltop constantly. They come, they watch the village, they gather there to make the people stressed. And then they come to attack us.
Radwan Abu Jundiya : My wife and seven-year-old daughter were sitting in our home on Wednesday night. I was outside when settlers started throwing stones at me. As I ran away from them, I looked back and saw our home was on fire. I thought my wife and daughter were still inside, but, thankfully, they had managed to escape to another house just in time. The settler entered the room my wife was in and beat her with a stick, and my daughter was struck with a rock on her face and with a stick on her arm. My wife’s fingers were broken. She was hospitalized and got stitches on her head for a deep wound. Now, even if we can repair our home, we would need to replace the roof. With this kind of roof, water will pour in once the rainy season starts given the damage from the fire. But it’s very hard because the settlers are watching us all the time, and we can’t really do construction work.
I have lived in Tuba my whole life. I was born in a cave right up the hill there. Now, we can’t access that cave anymore. We used to graze our sheep and goats in these valleys. Now we can’t take our livestock out because of the settlers. We have to buy feed for the animals now, and the settlers also burned our feed during the attack on Wednesday.
We live in constant fear. I can’t sleep in the nighttime or in the daytime.
Omar Abu Jundiya: Things weren’t always like this. We used to make our living from the land. Our sheep used to eat half of their food from grazing, and we would purchase half of it. Now, all of it comes from our own pockets. I need to sell at least half of my sheep because I can’t afford to keep them. When we grow grass outside our home for our sheep, the settlers come and make sure their animals eat our grass first so that our animals cannot. Even when we purchase feed, the settlers find where we store it and bring their animals to eat it. A few months ago, they attacked the village and on their way out, they opened our sheep pen and each settler walked out carrying one of our lambs in his hands.
In this village, it’s like we are in a prison. We are surrounded by outposts all around us, on every hilltop that encircles us. We don’t have water. They control the natural water wells now around the village. They swim in the natural springs we used to use for water, and all we can do is watch. The dehumanization is extreme. Every couple of days, settlers come with their animals to graze them in front of your home, in the garden of your home, and you’re just standing and watching. It’s to dehumanize you, to make you feel how powerless you are. They come harass you inside your home, and you just stand there. They know if you try to do anything, the best case is that you’ll be thrown in jail. They are taking our property from under our eyes. This is our daily life, in addition to the violent attacks. All that’s left for them to do is to violently kick us out of the village.
If this land could speak, it would tell of its true ownership. Now people claim it’s a military firing zone, or that it’s for the settlers. But this land could tell the truth.
Maya Rosen is an associate editor at Jewish Currents
