“In interviews like this, they can haul me before a judge and say, ‘Look, he spoke to a journalist in São Paulo and criticized us. Keep him in jail for three months and we’ll see if he renew his statements or not.’” This is how Ahmed* described the arbitrary arrests of Palestinian citizens in the West Bank in an exclusive interview with Brasil de Fato.
To reach Brazil, Ahmed had to leave two days before his flight, covering approximately 60 km. From his village, the only route to Jordan requires navigating Israeli checkpoints, which have become increasingly common since October 7, 2023. He also faces the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land and the demolition of homes by the Israeli military.
Ahmed notes that the Israeli government’s pressure on Palestinians intensified after the truce between Israel and Hamas in January. “In the West Bank, the situation worsened significantly after the truce because many Palestinian prisoners were released there. Consequently, controls increased as authorities sought to suppress any celebrations of Palestinian rights.”
Full interview:
Brasil de Fato: How do you assess the current situation in the West Bank? What has changed since October 7?
Ahmed: Since October 7, the occupation’s measures impacting our lives have intensified. For example, there’s been an increase in house demolitions, land confiscation, and overall control. While these issues existed before, their intensity has escalated. I don’t have exact figures, but there are now approximately a thousand checkpoints and gates.
These checkpoints are manned by Israeli soldiers, and the gates are often closed, effectively sealing off entire villages and towns. After October 7, Israelis feel more emboldened to commit attacks against Palestinians and confiscate land.
Israel has announced the creation of 22 new settlements in the West Bank. How does this impact the Palestinians?
In retaliation against countries that recognize Palestine, the Israeli finance minister, [Bezalel] Smotrich, is creating new settlements and naming them after those countries [mockingly naming a settlement ‘South Africa,’ for example].
While you mentioned 22 new settlements, there have been many more since October 7. The situation has deteriorated significantly since the end of the truce this year. This is because many of the released Palestinian prisoners were from the West Bank, leading to increased controls aimed at suppressing any celebrations of Palestinian rights.
On the day the truce began in Gaza, they implemented a much more intense blockade than before, as the prisoners had already started to be released. Palestinians naturally want to celebrate their release, and the authorities tried to prevent these celebrations.
A settlement means stealing more land, complicating life for Palestinians, and diminishing the possibility of a two-state solution, which is now practically non-existent.
You no longer believe in the two-state solution?
A Palestinian state and an Israeli state. I believe that this is the only political solution on the table and that, on the basis of this solution, everyone recognizes Palestine, but in reality I don’t know how viable it is, despite all the support for Palestine that has been growing lately, because this is to end the war. But the question of the two-state solution, today we’re talking about more than 800,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
If they can’t stop a war like the one in Gaza, how can they get 800,000 settlers out of the West Bank? If they can’t get water into Gaza, how are they going to get water out? The Minister of National Security, Ben Fir, has already armed more than 300,000 of these settlers in the West Bank. So we’re talking about an army of settlers. They are paramilitaries, all of them. We live surrounded by settlements, and the residents of these settlements themselves are armed. They act like an army. They enter the villages, close them down, steal, and the army has neither the will nor the power to stop them.
What has changed in your daily life since October 7?
We live in the central part of the West Bank, in villages surrounded by settlements. They placed the settlements in such a way as to cut off connectivity between the Palestinian villages. We are about 4,000 inhabitants who have only one access, one exit, the same one, a gate and a military post so small that only three soldiers are there. But these three soldiers, in one minute, close and block 4,000 people. The people in the villages work in the city and use roads to get around. The road that connects my village to the city is about 12 kilometers long, but it passes through several settlements. We are traveling 30 kilometers, more than double, to get around and not cross the settlements, because they are separating the roads that connect the settlements.
They invented roads for the Palestinians, which practically pass from one village to another and, in most cases, we don’t have access to the central roads that don’t pass through the villages. This complicates life. We are employees, workers. Others are, for example, traders who need to transport goods or farmers. This has made life very complicated for them. Much more so after October 7, and even worse after the last truce in January 2025.
In the future, if this situation continues, do you plan to move to another country? What options do you have?
Speaking for myself, I have no plans to move country. With the current situation and as far as you can resist, you have to stay there. But there are cases of many, many families who have made the decision to leave the country or move from one place to another when they can, because they have no choice. They arrive, decide that that area is dangerous, whatever it is, and we’re going to destroy it, demolish all the houses, and you’re left homeless overnight.
This increased a lot after October 7, the collective punishments of demolishing houses, entire buildings, for being near a settlement, near the road to a settlement, knowing that, in many cases, they say that these structures or these buildings don’t have a permit. But they don’t give permits to Palestinians, so people naturally tend to build even if they don’t have a permit, because that’s where they’re going to live, and many have lost all their own effort, nobody built the house for free, nobody gave them the house, it’s a house they built with a lot of effort.
In our case, we are employees, but there are others in my region who depend on agriculture, who don’t have a license. They have run out of water sources. In agriculture, they no longer have access to most of the land. The olive tree is very important, but no one can live on the olive tree alone. To depend only on the olive tree, you need a lot of land, which, in most cases, is no longer available. Theoretically, all Palestinians own land, but hardly anyone has a deed.
Apart from olives, what other food crops are important?
It depends on the region. In central Jordan, the olive tree is the best crop, the most common. Grapes too, speaking of fruits. Seasonal crops are no longer very important because of the lack of water. In the winter season, there are more, but there are variables: tomatoes, cucumbers, but the central area, in general, is not the most suitable for this type of crop.
In the north of the West Bank, there are vegetables and fruits of all kinds, even tropicals are being grown in the north, but with great difficulty due to the lack of water. Israel controls 85% of the water in the West Bank. There is an average consumption of six times more by settlers compared to each Palestinian citizen.
Every Israeli is entitled to six times more water. Well, as I said, the most complicated thing is getting around, there’s no connectivity. Between one city and another, which is 40 kilometers, 45 kilometers away, it can take a day and you may not be able to get there. This is the most complicated thing for all kinds of professions, whether entrepreneurs or employees.
What was it like coming to Brazil, what were the main difficulties in leaving the West Bank?
We only have access from the West Bank to Jordan. And you can leave from the airport in Jordan. This access is in a town called Jericho, near the Dead Sea. So it’s a small town with only two entrances and there are settlements. So it’s often closed and open, and the border crossing itself changes the opening hours. Now, the opening hours are very short, only from 8am to 4pm, four days a week, one day until 12pm and closed one day. I don’t know of any other border in the world that is closed and has opening hours.
You go from here to any country, at any time, and you cross. And then you always take into account leaving two days early to travel. For example, if I have my flight on such and such a day, I have to leave two days beforehand to make sure I get to Jordan before I miss my flight.
And on the way back too, two days before the date I’m supposed to be in Palestine because of the same problem. They could close at any time.
How are the arrests of Palestinians in the West Bank?
From October 7 until now, I think there are more than 12,000 detainees. That’s a very high number. It’s the first time that, for whatever reason, I don’t know the exact number, but I think a third are administrative detainees. In other words, you come and go, you’re not charged, you can’t defend yourself, only the head of security convinces the judge, directly between the two of them, that so-and-so represents a danger or is causing a nuisance. Then you get a three-month sentence. It can be renewed every three months. And there are people who have been there for five years without any charges against them.
For an interview like this, they can take me to the judge and say: “Oh, look, he spoke to a journalist in São Paulo and talked bad things about us, leave him in prison and give him three months, and we’ll see if we can renew it or not”. This is so that I have no way of defending myself, because they arrested me because I spoke to a journalist in Brazil. So they closed the case, and there are more than 3,000 or 4,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails without charges. Not counting those in Gaza, of course there is no information. Not even the Red Cross has precise data. Not much is known about this. Recently, it was revealed that an underground prison that had been closed since 1991 has been reopened for prisoners from Gaza.
This situation contrasts with the impunity of Israeli settlers…
I think we’re in a situation where there are 800,000 settlers in the West Bank, and most of them have dual nationality. They are committing crimes in every sense of the word, on a daily basis. And until their countries, the second nationality they have, don’t put them in front of the acts they are committing, nothing will change.
They think everything is fine with what they’re doing because nothing is happening. They’re stealing the land and they go back to the United States, to France, and their governments don’t say anything. So it’s fine to do that. But you can’t allow a Jew or a Zionist to try to take land from Brazilians.
So I think the most important thing is that everyone starts to see that if you are a citizen of any country, that country is responsible for what you do in its country and outside it.
*Ahmed is a fictitious name, adopted for security reasons at the request of the source
O post ‘I could be arrested for this interview’: Palestinian details daily life in the West Bank under Israeli rule apareceu primeiro em Brasil de Fato.
