Johnson’s visit to the illegal Ariel settlement will not make it legitimate

As a Palestinian on whose stolen land the settlement of Ariel was built, and who lives in a nearby village, I was deeply outraged by the visit of the US House Speaker Mike Johnson to the illegal settlement of Ariel last Monday. This visit aims to legitimise the theft of our land since 1978 and encourages the settlers to commit further violence and murder against my people.

Johnson boasts that the mountains of what he calls “Judea and Samaria” belong to the Jews by a promise from God. I do not know of any just God who would accept the killing of innocent indigenous people, the theft of their lands, and their expulsion. There is no doubt that this is the same God, who gave Johnson’s white ancestors the supreme license to kill the indigenous people of the Turtle Island and establish the United States of America.

The Ariel settlement was established in the late 1970s on land stolen from Palestinian villages in the Salfit area in the occupied West Bank. I still remember the beautiful landscape I used to see when I looked out of my window at the “Jabal Qurra” hill from my home village of Qira before the State of Israel stole it. It then declared it expropriated for public use before giving it to the settlers to build their colony on it. I remember the first caravan placed in this settlement, and how this hill turned into a terrifying concrete block in just a few years. Soon after, other settlements began to appear here and there on the surrounding hills, suffocating us and preventing our natural expansion and growth, preventing us from moving and almost blocking the air we breathe.

Built on private land stolen on “Jabal Qurra” from the indigenous Palestinians of the area, the Ariel settlement is now thriving and expanding into a city of over 20,000 settlers. It boasts a police station, a university shamefully recognised by many Western academic institutions, recreational and shopping areas, green spaces and public parks, schools and kindergartens, health care, synagogues, and more. Its illegal residents, settlers from all over the world, enjoy the beautiful mountainous climate, the abundant water and swimming pools stolen from the “Bir Maad” well and the nearby “Ein Simita” spring. They also enjoy the picturesque landscape, the absolute freedom of movement, and the full range of services, facilities, and privileges provided by the occupying government. All of this was recently “crowned” by the US House Speaker Johnson, the highest-ranking US official to visit a West Bank Israeli settlement.

Meanwhile, the surrounding Palestinian villages, located on the other side of the road and established centuries ago, suffer from a severe shortage of groundwater due to the occupation’s prohibition of using that same water, thus leading to a lack of basic services. Dozens of residents of these villages have been killed by occupation forces and settlers. All entrances to these villages have been closed with iron gates during the second Intifada until today. Development of the villages is forbidden and homes built without Israeli approval are demolished. Palestinians are barred from entering the Ariel settlement, which is surrounded by barbed wire and cameras, and blocked from using their own lands adjacent to the settlement.

Johnson’s visit to the settlement comes amid the largest, most dangerous, and most extensive settlement expansion and terror campaign being waged by settlers against the residents of the occupied West Bank. It coincides with ethnic cleansing and the expulsion of the Palestinian population in the West Bank, particularly in rural areas, while the occupation is committing genocide and starvation in the Gaza Strip. 

The political message of this visit is to legitimize the killing and displacement of Palestinians and the theft of their lands, providing cover for settler crimes in the West Bank, and thwarting the growing international recognition of the Palestinian state and the two-state solution. Johnson made this clear during his visit, claiming that these lands are not occupied but rather it is the right of the Jews to acquire them, and that the United States stands with them in this right. “Scripture teaches us that the mountains of Judea and Samaria were promised to the Jewish people, and they belong to them by right. But many people around the world do not see it like this, they label it the ‘occupied territories’ or the ‘West Bank’ or any other name,” he adds. “Every mayor here should know exactly where we stand regarding this issue — and we stand with you.”

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It is no wonder that this visit was organized by settler leaders in the so-called “Yesha Council,” whose hands and those of their gangs of criminal “Hilltop Youth” are stained with the blood of innocent farmers in the villages of Turmusayya, Sinjil, Silwad, and Kafr Malik and many other villages. Johnson will not bother to visit the surrounding Palestinian villages, nor will he bother to visit the families of the American citizens of Palestinian origin who have been murdered by terrorist settlers over the years, the most recent of whom were killed just a few days ago, a very short distance from where he was visiting.

Johnson was received by the so-called “Mayor of Ariel,” Yair Chetboun, an extremist settler who constantly incites the Israeli army to brutalise Palestinians. Over the past months, he personally took the initiative to close the roads leading to our Palestinian villages. Later, the army allowed these entrances to be partially opened, but once again, he opposed the decision and brought a bulldozer to forcibly close the Palestinian roads, on the excuse that Palestinian traffic impedes the movement of settlers, especially during rush hour. The entrances to the villages remain closed.

To make it worse, Johnson was accompanied on his visit -along with a number of US Congressmen- by his country’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who is even more extreme than the Israeli right itself. There is no greater evidence of this extremism than his denial of the existence of famine or ethnic cleansing in Gaza, which he visited last week accompanied by US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff.

While Johnson proudly toured the settlement of Ariel, my fellow residents of the neighbouring villages, which he certainly had never seen, were imprisoned behind iron gates and suffering from a severe shortage of water and services. While he was delivering his resonant words, settlers were burning fields in nearby Palestinian villages, fulfilling Johnson’s prophecy that this land was the exclusive right of the Jews, and that, according to the American view, Palestinians had no place on it. 

As an indigenous Palestinian who lives in this country, I say to Mr Johnson and his gang: My family house where I live in Qira had its first floor built by my great-grandfather more than 300 years ago, even before the founding of your state. The top floor of my house was built by my father years before the Ariel settlement was established, and my children are now planning to build a new one. My olive trees were planted by my ancestors hundreds of years ago and are still bearing fruit. My children and I plant more of these trees every year and we plan to plant more of them.

We Palestinians, the true owners of the land, will remain in this country, it is ours, inherited from our fathers and grandfathers. We cultivate it, we care for it, and we harvest its olives. Your visit will not change this fact, nor will it erase this right. Yes, we suffer to remain on this land, we are losing some of our children every day, but enough of them will remain to persevere and cultivate the land, make minimum living to survive. We are still here and determined to win our noble and just cause with the support of the free peoples of the world. 

The future belongs to the youth of free nations, and they are increasingly aware of your hypocrisy and complicity in the crime of occupation to curry favor with your masters who fund your election campaigns. People like you will be forgotten the day after they lose their positions and will vanish from the annals of history.

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