The identities of the Israeli settlers who frequently throw stones at cars from a cliff overlooking a highway in the West Bank are unknown, but Palestinians living in the area refer to them as the “youth of the hill”.
It was at that spot where someone dropped a jagged rock the size of a football that crashed through a windscreen and struck Aisha Rabi one Friday in October. Rabi, a mother of eight, was on her way home just after 10pm with her husband, who was driving, and their eight-year-old daughter, who was in the back seat.
“At first I lost control and swerved when the rock hit,” said Rabi’s husband, Yaqoub. “The sound was like an explosion. Blood was streaming from her nose and mouth.”
Yaqoub recalls peering through the crushed glass, slamming his hand on the horn to attract attention and desperately calling for help from anyone around. But it was late and the roads were empty. His daughter was screaming and he needed her to calm down and call the hospital as he drove them there.
At the emergency room, doctors rushed his wife away. “They told me her situation was dangerous,” Yaqoub said, sitting at home with his sons and staring at the floor. “Ten minutes after that they told me she was already dead when she arrived.”
Settler violence against Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has been rising since the beginning of 2017, according to the UN. This year 60 incidents attributed to settlers have resulted in Palestinian casualties and 157 in damage to Palestinian property. This is a 175% increase since 2016 and the highest number since a peak four years ago.
Many incidents involve the destruction of crops and trees, normally through cutting and torching during the olive harvest. Stone-throwing, arson and assault have also been reported by the UN, which documents attacks and vandalisation.
The incidents often follow violence by Palestinians against Israelis in the West Bank: 144 such cases of violence were reported in 2018, 33% lower than the year before but involving seven killings, higher than in 2017.
“Some of the peaks in settler violence against Palestinians recorded this year occurred within two or three days immediately after the killing of Israeli settlers by Palestinians and were presumably in retaliation,” the UN said in a November report.
Less than a week before Aisha Rabi was killed, a Palestinian man walked into a settler-run industrial park in the same area and killed two Israelis, prompting some to speculate that the Rabi incident was a revenge attack.
But other attacks are considered strategic, especially when they involve destroying land and property as a method of intimidation or to expand existing settlements on ruined farmland.
Yaqoub Rabi, 51, sees his wife’s killing simply as a hate crime. In the panic he did not see the attackers, who were hiding on the hill, but he said only settlers and soldiers were ever in the area as it was close to a settlement.
“It is impossible, impossible, impossible to see any Palestinians there,” he said. The attack was late at night on Shabbat, the holy day of rest for Jews, when many do not use cars. “They made sure no one was driving on the road but Palestinians and this is a well-known area where cars are hit with stones.”
He has almost no hope for any justice. On the night of the killing the civil administration, Israeli authorities that run occupied territory, questioned him and called to say they needed the car keys. They also spoke to him and his daughter in the days afterwards.
“The Israeli police are investigating,” he said. But he looked despondent.
Israeli security officials have expressed concern about an increase in attacks and have reportedly increased their presence in some areas. The Israeli justice ministry has previously said it makes “considerable efforts to enhance law enforcement in the West Bank”.
However, the UN says Israel, as an occupying power, has failed to ensure attacks are investigated effectively and perpetrators held accountable. “The failure to do so has been a longstanding concern of the humanitarian community in the [occupied Palestinian territories] and is believed to contribute to the persistently high levels of settler violence,” it said.
According to the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, of 185 investigations opened between 2014 and 2017 that reached a final stage, only 21, or 11.4%, led to the prosecution of offenders, while the other 164 files were closed without indictment.
Key among its concerns is the double legal system. Settlers who commit crimes are under the jurisdiction of Israeli law; Palestinians operate under a separate legal system, run by the military.
In the case of the murder of two Israelis by the Palestinian assailant in the same week as Rabi’s death, a manhunt was launched immediately that shut down large parts of the West Bank. Israeli authorities said they would demolish the man’s house – a longstanding Israeli policy for Palestinian attackers – and military prosecutors indicted his mother and brother.
In Rabi’s case, there has been no news since the initial chaos in the days following the attack. Police have since released a gag order on reporting on their investigation.
“Palestinians face trial in Israel’s military courts and receive far harsher sentences than settlers who are classed Israeli citizens and go to trial in civil courts,” Yesh Din said. “Israeli soldiers also have to be more careful in their handling of settlers, who have added protections under national law. This dual legal system is at the centre of the disparity.”
Yaqoub Rabi is not hopeful for a big change in the system, he just wants the hatred to end. “We don’t want problems, we don’t want violence. We want justice and we want peace,” he said. “I hope I will be the last.”
He spent 31 years with a woman he says was his “ultimate love”, whose intelligence he credits for moulding impressive children about whom he gushes with pride. Some of their children are now doctors and engineers. “We were living a happy life,” he said.
Now he is a single parent and struggling with the younger ones. Asked about his eight-year-old, who was in the car, he said simply: “Hard.”
“She has a bedwetting problem. She stays mostly with me. She speaks, but not much,” he said. “I need to show strength in front of my children. I can’t collapse in front of them.”