By providing a “protective presence” in the West Bank, international activists hope to deter unprecedented settler attacks.
( Waging Nonviolence ) – On July 22, in the Palestinian village of Ibziq, bright lights pierced through the tent at 12:30 a.m., jolting Baltimore, Maryland-native Nikki Morse and a fellow activist awake. The activists, both from the United States, were confronted by a masked young man who declared in accented English: “Your time is almost up.” Behind him, three others waited on an ATV. His shirt read “Artzeinu” — Hebrew for “our land.”
This encounter with Israeli settlers in Ibziq provides a glimpse into the daily reality for Palestinians under constant attack in the occupied West Bank. Since Oct. 7, 2023, B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, says settler violence has reached “unprecedented levels,” with entire communities forcibly displaced, their homes demolished or confiscated, and Palestinians subjected to collective punishment, killings and torture.
Amid global attention on Gaza, where leading experts say Israel is committing genocide, attacks in the West Bank have intensified, especially since President Donald Trump lifted sanctions on far-right settler organizations in one of his first moves in office. This reversed one of few concrete actions Biden had taken to challenge Israeli impunity while in office. With only medical personnel allowed into Gaza, International Solidarity Movement, or ISM, volunteers have turned to the West Bank, where it is still possible to enter. Morse, an organizer for Jewish Voice for Peace, spent three weeks in the West Bank in July to provide a protective presence by documenting and hoping to deter settler attacks.
“It was terrifying — the closest I’ve ever come to real danger in the West Bank,” Morse said.
The tent Morse slept in — with just a board for a door — exemplifies how Palestinians are forced to live, because they are rarely granted construction permits, despite residing on their land for decades.
Never again
Morse says intimidation was part of a coordinated campaign. That morning, Israeli soldiers had warned the Palestinian family: “You have to leave. The settlers are going to try something soon, and we won’t be able to stop them.” For Morse, it revealed “this almost tag team effort by the soldiers and the settlers to instill fear in the family.”
The confrontation with Israeli settlers evoked painful parallels for Morse. “What it felt like was what I’ve heard my great grandparents went through in Russia when they experienced pogroms,” they said. “This sense of vulnerability to armed gangs invading, attacking with absolutely no recourse to any kind of authority. In Russia, it was sanctioned by the state, and here in the West Bank, it is sanctioned by the state.”
“‘Never again’ must apply to everyone,” said Morse, who argues the lessons of the Holocaust and Jewish persecution demand resisting all forms of ethnic cleansing — including those justified in the name of Jewish safety. As an anti-Zionist, they oppose a Jewish-only state on Palestinian land and advocate instead for a democratic state with equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians.
An observant Jew, Morse sees their activism as a religious obligation: “I believe that is what we are required to do, because that’s what I believe is my role in making the world a space that is suffused with what we understand to be the presence of God.”
Tangible effects
The risks of this type of activism are real. In September 2024, 26-year-old Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a member of ISM, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper while attending a nonviolent protest in the West Bank. One year later, despite U.S. officials calling her killing “unprovoked and unjustified,” no one has been held accountable. Since Oct. 7, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least four other Palestinian-Americans in the West Bank with impunity.
Despite the dangers, ISM’s presence has at times resulted in real world impact for Palestinians. In the early 2000s, the community of Yanun in the northern West Bank agreed to return to their village only under the protection of international activists — and they remain there today. ISM volunteers also took part in breaking the sieges of Yasser Arafat’s compound and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during the Second Intifada, and have supported communities like Khan al-Ahmar in resisting forcible displacement.
More recently, activists acknowledge that clear wins are harder to identify. “Victories or tangible effects are really hard to assess these days, because we don’t know how attacks would play out without the presence of activists,” said Miriam, an ISM volunteer who asked to use only their first name for safety reasons. “What we do know is that communities have tried to return when accompanied by activists, and that we are supporting their struggle to remain on their ancestral land. Palestinians keep asking for our presence and that for us is a tangible effect and reason to continue doing what we do.”
The situation in Ibziq illustrates a wider campaign of systematic displacement as Israel accelerates settlement expansion. According to B’Tselem, at least 41 Palestinian communities in Area C, which is under direct Israeli military control, have been forcibly displaced since October 2023. This is the largest forced transfer since the start of Israel occupation of the West Bank in 1967. Another 40,000 Palestinians were displaced during an Israeli military operation in January and February 2025.
Miriam witnessed entire villages fleeing. “While I was there, there was a community in the south of the Jordan Valley of 200 people that left altogether. There was another Bedouin community west of Ramallah of 330 people that left 10 days after an outpost was placed very close to their village.”
According to the U.N., at least 1,860 incidents of settler violence occurred in the West Bank from October 2023 through December 2024 — an average of four attacks daily. At least 964 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers during this period, while demolitions displaced nearly 2,900 Palestinians and settler actions displaced another 2,400.
Two months after Morse’s confrontation, the settlers’ strategy succeeded. ISM reports that the last family left Ibziq and the village is now deserted.
As Reuters has reported, Israel’s settlement project systematically fragments Palestinian land through new housing, military zones and restricted areas. According to Israeli human rights group Peace Now, settlement expansion has surged faster since 2023 than in the previous nine years combined.
The role of ‘protective presence’
“Protective presence is kind of what it sounds like,” explained Dottie Lux, an Oakland-based activist who has spent four months in the West Bank over the past year. “The internationals are asked to come to spend time with Palestinian families as witnesses — as a set of eyes to report back to their home countries what’s been going on, but also in hopes of being a deterrent for settler and state violence.”
The work varies day by day, shaped by the actions of the occupation rather than a set agenda. Volunteers might accompany shepherds to protect them from harassment, document home demolitions or stay overnight to guard against settler attacks.
Lux recalled one incident where settlers tried to steal a family’s donkey. Israeli forces arrested the Palestinian owner, his daughter, and 13-year-old son, zip-tying them in front of their home. The internationals were left unrestrained to watch. After more than a day in custody, the family was released — but the donkey was never returned.
Miriam and Lux saw how heightened repression stunts Palestinian nonviolent organizing. “There’s not much organizing, unfortunately, because of how much nonviolent Palestinian resistance has also been destroyed in the West Bank — because of killings, because of torture in prison, because of collective punishment of villages,” Miriam said.
Even basic survival has become resistance. “Last year, for example, nonviolent resistance could look like refilling your water tank from a stream, and now that stream has been completely overrun with settlers preventing Palestinians from getting their water,” Lux observed.
“What Palestinians are doing now is staying on their land,” Miriam explained. “They are trying not to leave their houses, their land, their villages, and this is what we’re supporting now.”
Displacement campaigns have accelerated in recent months, with Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declaring the intent to “bury” Palestinian statehood through continued settlement expansion. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to provide billions in military aid while backing a two-state solution that Israeli policy openly undermines.
Challenging US complicity
The activists stress the direct role of U.S. support in enabling the violence they witness. “All of the guns, all of the water tanks, all of the handcuffs and locks — they all say either property of the United States or made in America,” Lux said.
Photo of Jericho, West Bank by Snowscat on Unsplash
Upon returning from the West Bank, Morse reached out to mainstream Jewish institutions in Baltimore offering to share their experiences, but so far those invitations have been declined. Instead, they spoke at a gathering organized by Baltimore Families for Justice, where activists held a letter-writing campaign urging local members of Congress to reconsider their support for Israel.
Morse also organizes with the “Apartheid-Free Baltimore” campaign, pressuring businesses not to stock Israeli goods as part of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, known as BDS.
They have also noted the change in public perception around Israel and Palestine. Recent polling shows U.S. opinion moving sharply against Israel: a majority of Americans now disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza, with support among Democrats dropping to just 8 percent. Nearly half of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide, and more than 80 percent favor an immediate ceasefire.
At a Sept. 24 antiwar vigil in Baltimore, Morse recalled being confronted by a pro-Israel activist who dismissed them as uninformed: “You haven’t probably even been to Israel. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Morse’s reply was direct: “I have been to the West Bank. I was just there.”
Jaisal Noor
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
© 2025 All Rights Reserved