Sébastien Le Belzic (in Modiin-Maccabim-Reout) / Photo credits: AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP
One month to the day after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, Israeli settlements in the West Bank live under very high protection. The settlers present refuse to leave the territory and even wish to continue establishing colonies. The special envoy from Europe 1 traveled along what is known as the green line.
Since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, Israeli settlements in the West Bank have lived under high protection. More than half a million Israeli settlers live there, in 150 settlements installed on the other side of what is called the green line, the old border of 1967. These settlers refuse to leave this territory and wish to continue these settlements.
“There are many who are very happy that we are there!”
In their settlement of Névé Tsouf in the West Bank, very close to the town of Modiin-Maccabim-Reout, 350 Israeli families live barricaded. Nathalie and her daughter Nofya are on the other side of the green line which separates Israel from the occupied territories. For them, the West Bank is an integral part of Israel.
“People say on the other side of the green line. I’m looking for it, I don’t see it. We live there, we haven’t colonized. All these Arabs who live around, there are many who are very happy that we are there! [Ils sont contents] to have roads that we build, to have electricity, to have running water, it is not at all the same way of living if we are there or if we are not there”, she says at the microphone of Europe 1.
“I don’t know if I can bear to raise my children here”
A difficult situation for her daughter to live with. “I don’t know if I can bear raising my children here. If I want to go out, I can go to the barrier that closes our settlement, it’s dangerous afterwards. Otherwise, I’m 80% sure that he Something will happen to me,” she explains. Like them, 500,000 Jewish settlers live among three million Palestinians in the West Bank.