By Mohammad Hesham Huraini, a Palestinian activist and journalist from the West Bank (7 April 2026).
The United States and Israel have declared another war on Iran, the world’s attention has shifted to this global escalation. And while headlines are focused on regional confrontation, we are watching our reality shift, using this moment to methodically increase agressions across the occupied West Bank.
All entrances to Palestinian villages and cities have been sealed. Concrete blocks, earth mounds, gates, and military checkpoints have cut communities off from one another. Entire towns are under closure. Movement between neighboring villages, once a matter of minutes, has gone from difficult to impossible. Families are separated. Workers cannot reach their jobs. Students cannot reach their schools. The sick cannot reach hospitals.
Using the global distraction of another war, settler attacks are escalating across the West Bank.
Residents are trapped.
In my community, Masafer Yatta, the occupation has blocked every road and entrance. They have denied us the right to move. We are not permitted to bring in food supplies. The settlers continue brutal attacks and work with the army to not even allow us to evacuate the injured after settler attacks. Even ambulances are not permitted to pass.
This is not incidental or coincidence. It is total closure. It is ethnic cleansing.
Three days ago, an attack took place in the village of Sfay, part of Masafer Yatta. A Palestinian man was shot in the hand by a settler’s bullet. There was no way to transport him to the hospital. The occupation had blocked all roads. The occupation army had stopped all vehicles. Time stretched painfully as we searched for any route that might allow medical care. There was none.
Imagine being wounded and knowing that help exists, but you are being kept away from it.
Across the West Bank, settlers, often accompanied by soldiers, are intensifying pogroms: armed raids on villages, destruction of property, burning of fields, physical assaults, and live fire. At the same time, the military lockdown ensures that Palestinians cannot defend themselves, cannot flee, and cannot access emergency services.
While all eyes are on the war with Iran, the infrastructure of dispossession in the West Bank accelerates.
The closures do not only suffocate movement, they attempt to suffocate life itself. Farmers cannot reach their lands. Shepherds cannot access grazing areas. Patients cannot attend dialysis appointments. Women in labor face insurmountable journeys. Families ration dwindling supplies because no trucks can enter.
This is collective punishment on a massive scale.
The urgency cannot be overstated. The lockdown of all entrances across the West Bank has turned a fragmented archipelago of isolated communities into completely siloed villages unable to access needs. Each village is an island under siege. Each attack becomes more dangerous because the occupation is trapping us. There is no escape and no rescue.
When the world looks elsewhere, settlers use that moment to intensify their violence.
What is happening now is not separate from the larger war. It is part of a pattern: moments of aggression are used to intensify control on the ground. As global powers trade threats, settlers expand outposts, roads are sealed, and Palestinian communities are squeezed further.
Masafer Yatta is only one example. But it is a stark one. We are living under total closure, exposed to escalating attacks, and denied even the most basic rights. We are stopped from moving to seek medical care, to survive with dignity.
This is an urgent call!
In several cities and i want to mention the nearby city Yatta has been closed and declared as a close military area by the Israeli occupation forces they raid the city and surrounded all the sides if the city and occupied over than 20 houses in their and making these a houses a military bases as how they called it , they kick the Palestinians out of their houses and make several families homeless for over than 4 days until what they call it a military operation, there was attacks by the soldiers every moment during their raid and several cars were destroyed and confiscated, it happened all around the West Bank but Yatta is an example of what happened.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health 48 were killed by the Israeli occupation forces and settlers, during this war it shows a clear reality and a systematic policy that works together to steal, harass and killing Palestinians while they know that all the attention on the war so they can do whatever they want with full impunity it doesn’t mean that settlers and soldiers are doing these actions only when there’s no eyes on them but they are taking the advantage of everything that happens around to continue with the occupation vision.