On the 50th anniversary of Land Day, marking the 1976 protests against Israel's seizure of Palestinian land, Israeli forces demolished two Palestinian homes in Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem. The demolitions came as settlers launched a wave of violence across the West Bank, torching homes, burning cars, and attacking villagers in what residents describe as an unchecked campaign of terror.

The homes of Fayez Ruwaidi and Na'im Shehada were destroyed Monday in the Al-Bustan area of Silwan, where Israeli forces accompanied by bulldozers also demolished surrounding walls. Four families had been evicted from their homes in the same neighborhood just days earlier, on March 25, after an Israeli court ruled that Jews owned the land their homes were built on before 1948.

The timing was deliberate. Land Day commemorates March 30, 1976, when Israel announced plans to confiscate 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) of Palestinian land in the Galilee. Palestinians inside what is now Israel declared a general strike and organized mass demonstrations. Israeli police killed six protesters that day, and thousands more were wounded and arrested.

Fifty years later, the land seizures continue — now accompanied by home demolitions, settler violence, and warnings that formal annexation of the West Bank may be imminent.

A Known Extremist, A Stolen Truck, A Rampage

The violence that swept across the West Bank last week began not in Silwan, but in the fields outside Beit Imrin, north of Nablus. There, 18-year-old Yehuda Sherman was killed on March 21 when his ATV collided with a vehicle driven by a Palestinian farmer.

Israeli police initially classified the incident as a traffic accident. Within hours, settlers — some reportedly close to Sherman and his family — claimed it was a deliberate ramming attack. Far-right leaders from the Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit parties echoed the claim. But Palestinian community members tell a different story: they say Sherman was in the process of stealing the farmer's pickup truck when the collision occurred.

Sherman was no innocent bystander caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a settler activist from an illegal outpost outside Jenin — illegal even under Israeli law. At his funeral in Elon Moreh, a settler described him as someone who "took his herd out to pasture to remove the enemy from all the territory there so that Jews will come back to this place." Every day, according to the eulogizer, Sherman worked to expel Palestinians from their land.

What followed Sherman's death was not a spontaneous outpouring of grief, but an orchestrated rampage.

Within hours of the funeral, approximately 100 masked settlers clad in black descended on the villages of Jalud and Qaryut, south of Nablus. They torched at least five vehicles, set fire to more than 10 homes, burned the Jalud village council building, attacked a fire truck and injured its driver, and attempted to burn a mosque. Israeli army and police forces were present on the outskirts of both villages but did not intervene.

The violence continued the next night, spreading to Deir al-Hatab. Two homes were completely burned down, three others partially set ablaze. Fourteen residents required hospital treatment. Residents reported that settlers threw Molotov cocktails and poured fuel, attempting to burn families alive inside their homes. One family only escaped by fleeing to the roof as their living room became an inferno.

In total, security sources reported some 20 separate incidents of nationalist-motivated attacks against Palestinians on the night of March 21-22 alone — arson, stone-throwing, physical assaults. Graffiti left on a mosque in Jalud read: "Revenge Yehuda."

Israeli forces eventually detained five civilians and confiscated weapons used in the attacks. All five were released the following day to three days of house arrest and barred from approaching within one kilometer of the village for a month.

The Numbers: A Decades-Long Campaign of Dispossession

Since October 7, 2023, the situation in the West Bank has deteriorated dramatically. As of October 2025, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that 999 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. That figure has since risen above 1,100.

• 1,137 Palestinians killed (as of March 2026)
• 11,700 injured
• 22,000 arrested

The violence is not evenly distributed. Between October 2023 and October 2025, OCHA documented 3,112 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians across the West Bank. These attacks have displaced more than 3,095 Palestinians, including 1,544 children — mostly from Bedouin and herding communities.

In the first nine months of 2025 alone, OCHA recorded over 1,200 settler attacks in 246 Palestinian communities, resulting in casualties, property damage, or both. Thirteen Palestinians have been killed in settler-related incidents so far this year. Another 785 have been injured.

The settler violence serves a clear purpose: clearing Palestinians from their land to make way for expansion.

Annexation on the Horizon

The demolitions in Silwan, the settler rampages, the mass arrests — these are not isolated incidents. They are part of a coordinated campaign to displace Palestinians from their land and create conditions for formal annexation.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended Yehuda Sherman's funeral and declared that the Israeli government was "working to bring down the Palestinian Authority and end the limited autonomy Palestinians have in some parts of the West Bank."

Smotrich is not a fringe voice. He is a senior minister in Israel's government, a longtime leader in the settler movement, and a vocal advocate for annexation. His presence at the funeral — celebrating the life of a settler activist who died while allegedly stealing a Palestinian farmer's truck — sends a clear message: the Israeli government backs the settlers.

Meanwhile, home demolitions continue unabated. Between October 2023 and October 2025, Israeli authorities destroyed, confiscated, sealed, or forced the demolition of about 3,590 Palestinian-owned structures across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing more than 7,100 Palestinians, including about 3,000 children.

In Silwan alone, the Jerusalem Municipality has announced plans to demolish 88 homes in the el-Bustan area, housing 1,000 residents. The neighborhood sits just outside the Old City walls, a strategic location for settlers seeking to expand Jewish presence and sever East Jerusalem from its Palestinian hinterland.

The 50-Year Cycle

Fifty years ago, Palestinians rose up to defend their land from confiscation. Six were killed. The land was seized anyway.

Today, the confiscations continue, but now they are accompanied by home demolitions, settler violence, mass arrests, and killings on a scale that would have been unthinkable in 1976.

The difference is that today, the violence is often carried out not by state forces, but by armed settlers operating with the tacit — and sometimes explicit — backing of the Israeli government. When settlers torch homes in Jalud and Deir al-Hatab, the army stands by. When they are finally detained, they are released within hours.

The message is clear: Palestinians have no protection, no recourse, no future on their land unless Israel decides to allow it.

Land Day was supposed to be a memorial — a reminder of what was lost and what Palestinians continue to fight for. Instead, it has become an annual marker of how much worse the situation has become.

The homes demolished in Silwan on Monday will not be the last. The settler rampages will not stop. The killings will continue.

Unless and until the international community forces Israel to account for its actions — to stop the settlements, to protect Palestinians from settler violence, to end the occupation — the cycle of dispossession will accelerate.

Fifty years after the first Land Day, the land is still being taken. The difference is that now, the world watches and does nothing.