The police closed the road to al-Rus, so the villagers found other ways up there.
asserted
villagers → close → ways
Beginning on September 13, local Palestinian citizens of Israel made the steep climb to the pine-covered hilltop above Majd al-Krum using horses, off-road vehicles and on foot.
asserted
citizens → begin → foot
A couple of weeks earlier, settlers from the occupied West Bank had begun building an outpost there, on village land – one of the first such attempts on this side of the Green Line, the name used for the boundary between Israel and the occupied West Bank.
asserted
settlers → begin → Israel
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asserted
you → warn → midterms
The young Israeli settlers said they were there to graze livestock with a Jewish National Fund (JNF) permit.
asserted
they → say → permit
But there was no livestock, noted Hussein Mannaa, 50, a lawyer and member of the town’s Popular Committee.
asserted
Mannaa → be → Committee
Within a week, the camp had grown from a handful of people to between 25 and 30, according to villagers, with a kitchen, a toilet, a water line and electricity.
uncertain
camp → grow → kitchen
Villagers rushed to the scene, so police closed the road to the site.
asserted
police → rush → site
Yet local Palestinians came in droves nonetheless.
asserted
Palestinians → come → droves
Anas Sgaier, a 21-year-old law student and youth organiser, made the nearly hour-long climb up the mountain.
asserted
Sgaier → make → mountain
“I remember one moment: I’m going up and it’s hard for me to breathe,” he said.
asserted
he → remember → moment
“And to my right, I saw an older woman, in her 80s, with her husband … walking up 50 minutes, just to show her presence.”
asserted
woman → see → presence
After almost a week of peaceful protests that saw hundreds of Palestinians from Majd al-Krum and across the region come every day, the JNF ordered the settler tents removed.
asserted
tents → see → region
By September 16, the site was cleared out.
asserted
site → clear → September
The village had won, for now.
asserted
village → win → ?
A ‘pilot’ experiment
A little more than a month later, Israelis head to the polls on Tuesday, and Palestinian villagers fear al-Rus was a prelude to what may come next.
uncertain
what → head → Tuesday
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is campaigning on a promise to “Judaise” the Galilee, where Palestinian citizens of Israel make up a large proportion of the population, and says he will repeat there “the revolution we carried out in [the occupied West Bank]”.
asserted
we → campaign → Bank
“The al-Rus experiment is like a pilot … experiment: ‘come on, let’s see the reaction’,” said Husein Khalaily, 50, an economic consultant, while sitting at his home in Majd al-Krum.
asserted
Khalaily → come → Krum
Reaction was swift: the village’s Popular Committee met as soon as the rumours of the settler outpost were confirmed and, with the local council, called daily demonstrations.
asserted
rumours → meet → council
“The popular struggle alongside the legal track is what bore fruit,” said Mannaa, a mainstay at the weeklong demonstrations at the site.
asserted
Mannaa → bear → site
It was young people who drove the protests, villagers said.
asserted
villagers → drive → protests
“Bring your coffee and come,” beckoned Sgaier in Instagram posts alongside his cousin.
asserted
Sgaier → bring → cousin
“We’re only going up to drink coffee, because that’s our land.”
asserted
that → go → coffee
“Not only the people of Majd al-Krum: Deir al-Asad, al-Bi’na, Sakhnin, Arrabeh … from the Naqab they came,” recalled Mannaa.
asserted
Mannaa → come → Naqab
Some left-leaning residents of nearby Jewish communities also turned up.
asserted
residents → lean → communities
“There was this incredible solidarity,” said Khalaily.
asserted
Khalaily → be → ?
Hanan, a Palestinian Christian from a nearby village, said the outposts she read about in the occupied West Bank had felt far away – until Majd al-Krum.
asserted
she → say → Krum
“I never saw the Arab community so united and really fighting for their lands,” she said.
asserted
she → see → lands
Smotrich came to Majd al-Krum, a village long known for its political activism, to campaign with a police force and a water cannon.
asserted
Smotrich → come → force
“The young people were hot-blooded and wanted to go out and confront him,” Khalaily said, but the local committees and political parties talked them down.
asserted
committees → want → them
But the targeting continued.
asserted
targeting → continue → ?
On September 18, police announced the arrest of a 32-year-old Majd al-Krum resident over alleged contact with a Lebanese agent.
asserted
police → announce → agent
Smotrich seized on it, saying Galilee residents were “in the atmosphere of October 6”, a reference to the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
asserted
residents → seize → Israel
On August 27, Smotrich posted a plan promising one million more Jews and 40 new Jewish communities in the Galilee and al-Naqab, another area of Israel where many of the residents are Palestinian.
asserted
many → post → residents
His party then released an AI-generated video in which a West Bank Palestinian frantically warns a relative in the Galilee that “the Jews are coming” to “do to you what they did to us”.
asserted
they → release → us
Sgaier said he and his friends laughed at the absurdity of the video.
asserted
he → say → video
Then they watched it come to life at al-Rus.
asserted
it → watch → Rus
“He came here and said it clearly: ‘I want to Judaise the Galilee,’” said Khalaily.
asserted
Khalaily → come → Galilee
“Back in the day, they used to say, ‘we want to develop the Galilee.’
asserted
we → use → Galilee
Villagers believe the recent provocations are intended to create a pretext for making that happen, where Palestinian citizens hold rights that Palestinians under military occupation in the West Bank do not, making dispossession a harder proposition.
asserted
dispossession → believe → Bank
…and 47 more, not listed.
The Aporia
