Israeli settlers illegally seize land belonging to Doctors Against Genocide co-founder

Israeli settlers seized land in the occupied West Bank belonging to Nidal Jboor, a Palestinian-American doctor and co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide (DAG), "a coalition of healthcare professionals who wanted to unite their voices in uproar against the genocide in Gaza". 

His family land is in Masafer Yatta, an area that was heavily featured in the Oscar-winning documentary, No Other Land. 

“We're really at a loss,” Jboor said. He said his family is trying to talk to lawyers and any organisation that can help, adding that they know this is how forced displacement always starts.

Jboor, who lives in Michigan, said he “felt heartbroken” on learning that settlers had seized his family’s land on 18 August. The 50-acre tract of land is home to more than 500 olive trees, in addition to almond trees and grapes.

Jboor’s family, who are currently in Palestine, include his father, mother, seven brothers, and three sisters.

Since a group of armed settlers arrived last week, members of his family have seen them set up tents, build a couple of structures for living in or housing animals and put their livestock out to graze on the land - all while being protected by the Israeli military. 

Jboor’s family lives close to an area in Masafer Yatta that Israeli authorities declared to be a military training zone in the 1980s, leading to hundreds of Palestinians fighting to remain on their ancestral lands as their homes are increasingly demolished.

Jboor said his family checked official records to see if there were any new military orders that would make the family’s land a military zone, or if anyone had mistakenly sold the land. They were told that there is no military order or legal proceedings against the land, and that no one had mistakenly sold it, so it is still theirs.

“Once they build these structures, they start claiming it's their land, and it's time for us to go. So we're trying our best now, since this just started, to fight it as much as we can. Unfortunately, we cannot fight by force because we don't have weapons or anything to fight with. They have the army and weapons on their side.”

Jboor said that court cases are normally delayed, and then the settlers become more established and eventually build settlements. The state usually legalises what the settlers do retroactively.

“I'm an American citizen,” Jboor said. “This is my land. My goal is to talk to our politicians to defend my rights as an American citizen, and as a Palestinian citizen too, because those weapons that the settlers have are American weapons.”

He expressed concern that the US government sold more than 20,000 US-made assault rifles to Israel in April, which Biden had delayed because he was concerned the rifles would go to settlers.

“We know these settlers are violent," he added. "I'm scared to death that settlers might kill my brother-in-law, my sister, my father, my uncle or my cousins.”.

Jboor expressed how important their ancestral land is to his family, as generations had lived there. 

"They spend days and days and days tending to the grapes, olive and almond trees, irrigating them, and trying to make sure they grow. Every tree for them is like a piece of themselves. So it's not easy for someone to walk in your door and tell you that all you've been working on for decades is theirs now, and you just need to leave".

The State Department declined to comment on the incident. 

Violence in Masafer Yatta

Despite No Other Land highlighting the forced displacement and illegal home demolitions of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, activist and English teacher Awdah Hathleen - who was a consultant for the documentary - was killed in July by an Israeli settler in an area three miles from the Jboor property.

Palestinian activist who worked on Oscar-winning film 'No Other Land' killed in occupied West Bank

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The settler accused of killing Hathaleen, Yinon Levi, had previously been sanctioned by the Biden administration and the European Union for his violent attacks on Palestinians and their property. The Trump administration lifted sanctions on Israeli settlers in January.

Despite video evidence capturing Levi firing a gun towards Hathleen, Levi has been released.

Jboor, whose father was the principal at the school that Hawthleen and his siblings attended, said that Hawthleen's murder compounded his fears for his own family's safety.

"That's why I'm so worried about the safety of my family," Jboor said.

A report by Israeli NGO Kerem Navot found that the State of Israel uses the pretext of military training to seize Palestinian land in the West Bank.

“It appears that the main goal… is to drastically reduce the Palestinian population’s ability to use the land and to transfer as much of it as possible to Israeli settlers,” reads the introduction to the report.