Qassam Muaddi
Mondoweiss / October 11, 2024
Following a year of rising Jewish settler attacks on the people of Beita and the death of Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the West Bank village is keeping civil resistance alive in the face of the threat of Israeli colonial land grabs.
The village of Beita just south of Nablus has been confronting Israel’s attempts to establish a settlement on its lands on Mount Sabih since 2021, but since October 2023, Israeli attacks on the people of the village have risen dramatically. As settler encroachment onto village lands intensified over the past year, the Israeli government legalized the outpost of Evyatar in June. This marked an alarming reversal of an earlier decision to evacuate the outpost in 2021 — just two months into the popular protests that had been launched by Beita’s residents.
Following the legalization of the Evyatar outpost, Israel also confiscated over 65 dunams of land surrounding it. This has led to a resurgence of civil resistance by Beita’s residents.
The killing of Turkish-American solidarity activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in Beita on September 9 during these renewed protests brought the Palestinian village back into the spotlight four years after becoming a symbol of civil resistance in Palestine.
Eygi had gone to Beita for the first time in order to stand in solidarity with the people of the village. She was killed while standing beside Palestinians who performed the Friday prayer on their land threatened with confiscation, under the sight of Israeli soldiers. She was the 15th person killed by Israeli forces during the protests in Beita since its civil resistance began in May 2021.
Beita continues its civil resistance, attracting international activists and Palestinians, at a time when the Israeli occupation ramps up the militarization of its crackdown on armed Palestinian resistance. Civil resistance in the West Bank has also been associated, since the early 2000s, with the presence of international activists like Eygi. These activists try to give a degree of protection to Palestinian communities through their presence.
The killing of Eygi and Israel’s offensive on the settlement expansion front, amid increasing Israeli militarization, puts the future of civil resistance and the continued presence of international solidarity in Palestine into question.
Rise and fall of civil resistance
Abdel Salam Maala, a Beita native and resident, and member of the village’s municipal council, told Mondoweiss that “When the outpost was first established, and the threat to our lands began, all the people of Beita stood as one. When the outpost was evacuated, protests calmed down and became limited to Friday prayers.”
But since October 7, settler attacks on the village residents have dramatically risen. “The settlers have become much more aggressive,” Maala said. “They now come close to the village and attack people. They even threatened a family with death and expulsion from their house.”
“In recent months, the confrontations between protesters and the soldiers have happened closer to the village’s houses,” Maala added. “And soldiers now behave without any restrictions. They killed four residents who were doing nothing but standing in front of their houses during raids, and one soldier even shot and injured me inside my house during the arrest of my 22-year-old son because I protested how they were beating him.”
“This unleashed violence by the occupation and its settlers is not strange if we compare it to what the occupation is doing in Gaza, or even in parts of the West Bank,” Maala went on. “But the civil resistance continues anyway, and so the presence of international activists is important.”
Maala also thinks that these activists’ advocacy for Palestinians in their native countries is even more important. “They need to pressure their governments to take a stand,” he explained.
Wahaj Bani Moufleh, a photojournalist in his mid-twenties from Beita who has covered the civil resistance in the village since its early days, told Mondoweiss that “the entire village paid a price to keep the civil resistance going, and there is no house in Beita where there isn’t a martyr or an injured person or a detainee.”
One of the first martyrs in Beita was Bani Moufleh’s cousin. “The first photo I took of the civil resistance was of his body,” he said. “In those days, there was a special sense of unity, where people from all political affiliations put their differences aside. That is what made the resistance successful, but then the human cost grew very heavy for a small village like Beita.”
Bani Moufleh explains that the majority of men in the village used to work in Israel before October 7, and subsequently lost their livelihoods with the mass revocation of Israeli work permits. “In addition to the 15 martyrs, the wounded and injured are in the hundreds, and literally in every family, and this made the resistance activities decrease after the evacuation of the settlers’ outpost,” he added.
However, Bani Moufleh still believes that the younger generation is “beginning to bring back the resistance to its height, especially after the martyrdom of Ayşenur.”
“I hear them say that if she came from America to stand with us and died here, then we can’t leave the struggle,” he adds. “The civil resistance never stopped, although it has an unpredictable curve of intensity as it goes up and down, depending on conditions and events. In Beita, at least, it has become part of the community’s life, and therefore will continue regardless of the conditions.”
Social solidarity and resistance through other means
Amal Bani Shamseh, a resident of Beita and member of the village’s women’s association, says that this resistance has become a part of the community’s life, even when protests aren’t taking place.
“At the beginning of the resistance three years ago, we as a group of women started an initiative to prepare meals for protesters every Friday, and then the majority of women in the village joined,” Bani Shamseh recalls. “We were self-funded, and some women sold their wedding jewels to fund the meals, and we continued until the settlers’ outpost was evacuated. But then the needs became bigger than meals at the protests.”
“The loss of work has been devastating for many families, and this requires a nonstop solidarity effort by the entire community,” she explains. “The municipality, the women’s association, and other associations put together an initiative to help the families who have been affected by the occupation’s punitive measures.”
The work the group of women started to undertake was to support families in need and who couldn’t pay their bills. “We pay the electricity bill at least, and we also distribute food parcels and constantly fundraise for this purpose,” she says. “The civil resistance continues, even when it is not noticed.”
When asked about the role of international activists, she said they are “an important help.”
“Their presence gives us motivation,” she explains. “But also brings visibility to our struggle. The martyrdom of Ayşenur was felt by everybody in Beita, and it moved feelings for more resistance, especially among the youth.”
This is what led the people of Beita to mourn Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. They held a mass funeral for her because she was one of Beita’s martyrs.
Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss
