Taybeh, West Bank – In September 2025, armed settlers descended on Roland Bassir’s family-owned quarry and cement factory in the West Bank village of Taybeh.
They shot at him and other workers and set fire to a NIS 17,000 ($6,000) cement bagging machine, destroying the piece of equipment.
Since then, the factory has been shuttered, and Bassir has been out of work.
“Our work is interrupted,” Bassir told The New Arab. “We have a lot of videos and documentation of how the settlers are coming and attacking and harassing us at the quarry. We are seeking support from the village, from the church here, but we’re not getting the protection we need, so we can’t continue to work in the quarry.”
Taybeh is sandwiched between the Israeli settlements of Ofra and Kokhav HaShahar, but residents say problems with settlers started just before and increasingly after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, when settlers began establishing outposts around the town.
To date, six outposts – makeshift encampments not authorised by the Israeli state – encircle Taybeh.
“Our problem is not with these people who were already located on this land since 1967,” Father Bashar Fawadleh, priest at Taybeh’s Holy Redeemer Church, told TNA.
“Our problem is with the fanatic and extremist mentality coming from [Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and [Israeli National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir – the mentality to remove the other from the land. This is the problem.”
Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir – elected to Israel’s government in 2022 as part of the state’s most far-right coalition in its history – are notorious for their anti-Palestinian racism and Jewish supremacist ideology.
Before joining the government, Ben-Gvir worked as a lawyer for Jewish extremists accused of terrorism and defended the settlers who firebombed a home in the West Bank village of Duma in 2015, which killed three, including a toddler.
Smotrich is known for crafting ‘Israel’s Decisive Plan,’ a document requesting Palestinians either leave the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea or stay as subordinates to the Israeli state and give up their aspirations for statehood and self-determination.
The first major incident of settler violence in Taybeh began during Palestine’s olive harvest season in October 2023, immediately following the 7 October Hamas attack and Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
“Five of our people were attacked by the settlers during harvesting in the eastern area. More than 10 individuals had their equipment, their phones, their IDs, everything stolen by settlers,” Fawadleh said.
“On the same day of this attack, the settlers also attacked the student bus at the school, and they broke all the windows in the bus, but we were lucky because nobody was inside the bus.”
By 2025, interactions with settlers got even worse, Fawadleh said, explaining that their initial goal was to expel the Bedouin communities around Taybeh. More recently, settlers have widened their objective, targeting the entire Palestinian presence in and around Taybeh.
Israeli settlers established two outposts in 2025 at the western entrance to Taybeh and frequently graze their herds of sheep, goats, and camels on Fadi Kaabneh’s land.
TNA attempted to visit Kaabneh on the morning of 26 May 2025, but was unable to after settlers encroached on Kaabneh’s land, and the Israeli police and army were called.
When Israeli authorities arrived, the army declared the area a closed military zone and erected a flying checkpoint at Taybeh’s western entrance, which TNA was then stuck at. Residents say the entrance is often obstructed now by a military checkpoint.
Later in the day, TNA tried to reach Kaabneh again, but settlers stormed Kaabneh’s land once more, surrounding his home.
“Since the 7th of May, it has gotten worse,” Kaabneh told TNA via telephone (the only way TNA could contact him because of ongoing settler harassment).
“Settlers came with a lot of livestock and sheep and goats…They’re cutting the wires and fence surrounding our home because they want to enter our land.”
Kaabneh and his family have lived in their home since 1995, and their land is registered under their name in the Tabu, Israel’s official land registry.
Kaabneh’s land is located in Area B, under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, while security responsibilities fall under the Israeli military’s domain. Under this framework, when there is a security-related issue, it must be reported to the Israeli authorities.
“The settler presence has been around here for three years, and it’s made our lives hell,” Kaabneh said.
“My father has difficulties even going to a police station, where he sits there all day waiting for his turn to be let in to file a complaint at the police, and that’s the reason why we got a lawyer to help in this case because we feel hopeless, and the authorities are useless in protecting us.”
Despite the settler hostilities, Kaabneh says he won’t leave his land.
“We don’t see anywhere else to go,” Kaabneh said. “The settlers are attacking on all sides and from all places, and they’re spreading from one village to another. They have a plan to confiscate and to squeeze the villagers out, to displace us so they can come and take over the places that are left behind.”
Bassir, though, whose family has owned the quarry for 20 years and whose roots originate in Taybeh, feels differently, saying he would take the next flight out of Palestine if he had the option.
“The people who have a way to get a visa or go to another country, they would not think twice, and they will immigrate…because there’s no support and the future isn’t bright if they stay in Taybeh,” Bassir said.
According to Fawadleh, 15 families consisting of 100 individuals have left Taybeh since 2023.
With its lush valleys studded with olive groves, Taybeh isn’t just famous for its pastoral landscape. The town’s Christian presence stems from the 9th century and is biblically known as Ephraim.
Today, it is the last fully Christian town in the occupied West Bank, where the population of approximately 1,200 belongs to Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, and Greek Orthodox traditions.
Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity, is currently experiencing a spike in Israeli violence against Christians.
In 2025, the Religious Freedom Data Center, an Israeli organisation tracking anti-Christian attacks, recorded over 180 incidents of violence against Christians in occupied East Jerusalem and Israel – a near 60 per cent increase from the previous year’s documentation.
With attacks growing against the Christian village of Taybeh, residents fear that this could spell the end of the faith’s presence in the Holy Land. In 1948, the Palestinian Christian population stood at 12.5 per cent. That number has plummeted to 1.2 per cent today.
“We are waiting for more pressure through official channels by the leaders of the churches, by the leaders of the diplomatic missions, by all the people who want to see the Christian presence in the land continue because it is now in danger,” Fawadleh said.
If not, he warns, “this land will be empty soon”.
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist covering Palestine and Israel. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The National, and Gulf News.
Follow her on Twitter: @jess_buxbaum
Edited by Charlie Hoyle
