'The settlers are in control': How the West Bank is being ethnically cleansed

'The settlers are in control': How the West Bank is being ethnically cleansed Submitted by Peter Oborne on Fri, 05/15/2026 - 11:04 Armed, funded and openly endorsed by Israel's far-right government, settlers are terrorising Palestinians with impunity The 50km journey from Ramallah north to Nablus in the occupied West Bank used to take an hour. Israeli checkpoints now mean it can take half a day or more. It’s Friday morning and I’m on a bus full of students and young families going to stay with relatives for the weekend. We swing left to join Highway 60, which runs along the ancient route from Hebron in the south to Jenin and Nazareth to the north. In Ottoman times it was known as the “route of the thieves”, with robbers lying in wait for unwary travellers. Today the thieves are Israeli settlers. Were Palestine to become its own state, Highway 60 would become a key piece of national infrastructure. But now every hundred metres or less is an Israeli flag. On the bus there’s a discussion about who planted the flags. All agree they weren’t there a year ago. Beside the flags are occasional posters depicting a rabbi in a black coat, with a protruding beard under his black homburg hat. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson died 30 years ago, but to many settlers he is a living presence. His followers believe that all the land of historical Israel belongs to the Jews. Settlers paste his emblem - a blue crown against a yellow background above a Hebrew word meaning messiah - in Palestinian villages and at crossroads. An Israeli soldier at an army post bearing a poster of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson at a junction south of Nablus in 2021 (Menahem Kahana/AFP) ...

Original source: Middle East Eye