Israel keeps building settlements and Palestinians keep dying. Peace is impossible this way | Raja Shehadeh

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year. Where is the accountability?

It was early April 1988, at the height of the first intifada, and the hills were awash with spring flowers. I took the professor and activist Noam Chomsky to visit the Palestinian village of Beita near Nablus. He wanted to speak to the villagers about a recent incident in which a group of Israeli settlers from Elon Moreh, 10km (6 miles) from Beita, had got into a confrontation with some villagers while out hiking. Two of the Palestinian villagers and one of the Israeli settlers were shot and killed. The army initially blamed the Palestinians for the settler's death. It emerged later that she - like the two dead villagers - had been killed by a bullet fired by one of the men guarding the settlers. But, by then, the army had invaded the village, destroyed at least 14 houses, killed a third villager, arrested dozens of men in the village and deported several of them. Chomsky listened attentively and was saddened but not surprised. He had anticipated that an increased rate of settlement-building would place the occupier and the occupied, the land confiscators and those who lost their land, close together physically - with predictable results.

This prediction has grown truer by the year, but I still could not have imagined the state we would be in 34 years later. Just last Friday, soldiers killed Adel Daoud, aged 14, and Mahdi Ladadweh, aged 17. On Saturday, two more teenagers, Mahmoud Al-Sous and Ahmed Daraghmeh, were killed. The number of people killed by Israeli forces this year stands, shockingly, at more than 100.

For many years, the land around Beita was generally peaceful, and we enjoyed many lovely walks in the valley below the mountain of Jabal Sabih. It was surrounded by olive orchards. The track we would walk along had smooth rocks where water flowed in winter, and in spring carpets of multicoloured wildflowers covered both sides.

Then, last February, the Israeli attorney general moved to authorise the re-establishment of the evacuated Israeli settlement of Evyatar, on land that is privately owned by Palestinians, near Beita on Jabal Sabih. Since May 2021, regular protests have been held by Palestinians against this outpost and other settlements in the area, resulting in nine Palestinians being killed and 5,300 injured.

At the time of Chomsky's visit, there was still some expectation that the Israeli political opposition to settlements had some prospect of success. Today, the left in Israel is almost completely silenced. The major parties in next month's elections compete on who is the greater proponent of settlements, and who takes a tougher line at quashing Palestinian resistance to it. The prime minister, Yair Lapid, and defence minister, Benny Gantz (both of liberal", centrist" parties), each tries to prove to voters that, contrary to what the right claims, they are not weak on security". This means that, until the elections take place, we can only expect more Palestinians to be maimed and killed.

Raja Shehadeh is the author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I (Profile Books)

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