On the night of March 17th, 2024, the Israel Defense Forces launched another attack against Palestinian territories, disregarding a ceasefire agreement that lasted less than two months. Israeli military aircrafts bombed several areas across Palestinian land, from Gaza City, in the north, to Khan Yunis, in the south. Recent data from the Gaza Health Ministry show that 591 Palestinians, including 200 children, have been killed, and 1,042 people have been injured in the enclave since Israel violated the ceasefire agreement. The attacks have happened despite the fact that Palestinian groups of resistance are doing their part in the ceasefire agreement. Even before the recent attacks, Israel was already back to blocking the Gaza border and preventing trucks from carrying water, food, and other essential items to Palestinians. As La Via Campesina stated in response to the recent attacks against civilians in Gaza during Ramadan, “This is genocide. It is an organized, systematic attempt to erase the Palestinian people, and the world is allowing it to happen.”
In a statement available here, Amjad Shawwa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO Network), says that “75,000 people are currently in the northern part of Gaza, without food or humanitarian aid for the past two months. They have been displaced three or four times. Seventy percent of those killed are women and children. Seventy percent of the hospitals are no longer functioning. The food crisis is unmanageable: in the Gaza Strip, crops such as citrus fruits, oranges, grapes, guavas, and strawberries were previously produced. All these crops have been destroyed, and famine has now taken hold. Before October 7, 700 to 800 trucks crossed the border daily; today, only 30 to 40 trucks are allowed through, which accounts for just 5% of daily needs. NGOs are doing what they can to help the people.”
In the West Bank, activists with the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), linked with the international peasant movement La Via Campesina (LVC), have denounced the quick escalation of the violence perpetrated by Israeli military and settlers. As their statement published on January 27th, 2025 reads, “Following the ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli occupation announced a shift in its military focus and resources to the West Bank. In turn, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) declared plans to escalate the scope and intensity of its operations in the West Bank and redeploy its troops from Gaza, including the ‘Nahal Brigade.’ These moves signal a clear intensification of systemic Israeli efforts to expand control over Palestinian land and dismantle Palestinian society.”
The statement also reports that “the West Bank Protection Consortium (WBPC) reports over 2,274 recorded incidents of settler violence, including physical assaults, arson, and property destruction. The scale of land theft in the West Bank has reached historic proportions, leaving thousands of Palestinians displaced, stripped of their livelihoods, and severed from their historical connection to the land in the past year alone.”
The Palestinian genocide in Gaza, which has escalated since October 7th, 2023, opened the way for Israel to promote an even more devastating occupation of the West Bank. In 2024, more land has been stolen in this area than in the previous 30 years combined, since the 1993 Oslo Accords. As more areas are occupied, Palestinians have their movement around and across cities in the West Bank more broadly and violently restricted. “The Colonization & Wall Resistance Commission reports 898 movement obstacles throughout the West Bank, restricting movement and access to basic services, especially for communities in Area C,” the UAWC statement reads. What this reality means for Palestinian life in the West Bank has been described in the diaries of Fanny Metrat and Morgan Ody, members of La Via Campesina who joined an international brigade that visited the territory in December 2024.
A Militant Mission
Since 2023, the escalation of the massacres in Gaza and the openly genocidal intentions of the far-right Israeli government have led La Via Campesina to intensify its solidarity work with Palestinian farmers. Gradually, organizing a trip for a delegation to visit the West Bank became an imperative. So from December 8th to 18th, 2024, a delegation of nine peasants, all members of La Via Campesina, traveled to the West Bank on a mission to support and express solidarity to the Palestinian people and the Palestinian organizations that are members of the LVC, including the UAWC. Solidarity missions are important tools to exert international pressure and are the result of collective efforts of grassroots organizations from around the world. For example, as the activists share on their blog, the visit of international volunteers to work on Palestinian crops in the West Bank was often what made it possible that these areas were not destroyed, providing protection to farmers to access their land for the harvest.
Fanny and Morgan, of the Peasant Confederation, from France, were members of the delegation and wrote journals sharing their firsthand accounts. Their stories, opposing all Western media’s rhetoric of criminalization and homogenization, show how Palestinians in this area are actually living during the military offensive .
On the first day, they saw how Palestinian life is like under institutionalized occupation. After they landed at the Tel Aviv airport, the UAWC member who was responsible for driving them to Jerusalem had a special license plate that allowed them to travel across cities. As they explain, “this is a key aspect of the apartheid system in Israel/Palestine. Israelis have yellow license plates, granting them the right to travel in Israel, Jerusalem, and the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have white license plates, which bar them from entering Israel, Jerusalem, and even East Jerusalem, which is supposed to be part of Palestinian territories. However, there is a specific category of Palestinians, residents of Jerusalem, who have yellow plates and a special ID card. A Kafkaesque system of authorized and prohibited roads, barriers, and numerous checkpoints completes this structure.”
The occupation and genocide directly and brutally affect food supplies across Palestine. Morgan and Fanny shared that the Minister of Agriculture, Rezeq Salimia, explained that Palestine has the potential to be self-sufficient in food production, especially vegetables, poultry, olive oil, and dates. This is also true for fishing, especially in Gaza. However, the continuous occupation, the blockade, and the recurrent attacks have severely impacted the industry, which has not been operating since October 7th, 2023. The destruction of land using heavy weapons has not only killed people, but also contaminated the soil, making it barren and inappropriate for growing crops. Moreover, the constant threat of random air attacks, which may hit anywhere with no warning, makes working the land nearly impossible in the Gaza Strip.
In the West Bank, virtually all local economy is reliant on farming, but the expansion of Israeli settlements poses an ever greater challenge for production. The situation has become worse since that October 7th, with the expansion of settlements, land seizing, roadblocks, and settlers attacking farmers. This has led to a shift in farming policies to face the emergency. The minister said that, if it were not for the occupation, Palestine would be ready to achieve food sovereignty.
The journals addressing the first two days of the trip are translated into English and Spanish and have been published on the website of the 3rd Nyélèni Global Forum. The entries about the following days were shared on the LVC website. Their daily journals address the cities they visited in the West Bank and the people they have met along the way, a story of the occupation. As they explained in the entry about the third day, “Palestinian villages are located in valleys, surrounded by olive tree fields and other trees, near waterways. Hilltops are quite inhospitable. But it is where Israeli settlers have settled, for clear strategic reasons. From up there, they rule, both literally and figuratively.”
In face of yet another stage of Israeli violence, which continues to kill Palestinians, it is fundamental to have local resistance, an international solidarity movement, and a movement to denounce the State of Israel and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu. In this sense, the UAWC argues that “States must abide by their legal obligations as determined by the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and United Nations General Assembly, which state that Israel must end its occupation of the West Bank. […] The cost of inaction is measured in lives lost, communities destroyed, and an ever-deepening humanitarian crisis.”
