An Australian moved to the West Bank to work on his family farm. Now settlers are trying to destroy it

Palestinian-Australian farmer Sari Kassis is defending his farm from the Hilltop Youth

Sari Kassis is a Palestinian-Australian farmer based in Birzeit, Palestine.

I belong to a farming family from Birzeit in the West Bank. I am a diaspora Palestinian and moved here in 2022, but our family have been here for hundreds of years.

We’ve been farming grapes and producing wine since the 1990s, and olives since long before then. We also have some smallhold farms where we grow seasonal produce.

About three months ago, we received a notice from the Israeli army announcing the creation of a new ‘military security zone’ of approximately 7-8,000 square metres in an area between Birzeit and Atara, a neighbouring village.

At the centre of this new security zone is a Zionist settler outpost that was illegally set up by members of the Hilltop Youth movement, a fundamentalist militia group designated as a terrorist organisation in Australia, the United Kingdom and the European Union. This ‘security zone’ now includes some of our farmlands, as well as lands belonging to other families from our village and from Atara.

Since the establishment of their outpost, the Hilltop Youth have systematically invaded our farms, destroyed our crops, and herded their sheep – themselves stolen – to graze on our vineyards and orchards. They have set their sheep loose on at least 300 vines and deliberately cut 200 others – between a quarter and a third of our total vines. They have stolen our farming equipment, including water tanks, posts, irrigation hoses, and other tools we need to work our land.

This group in particular has already shot two people in Atara, seriously wounding them. They have burned cars, attempted to burn our homes in Atara, and carried out other acts of intimidation and destruction designed to terrorise us and make our continued presence on our land feel impossible.

In addition to wine grapes, we also grow table grapes. Most of those were planted by my paternal grandmother – some of those vines are older than the state of Israel. In the Hilltop Youth’s last attack, they cut those vines.

The tip of the spear

What is happening here is not a matter of a few ‘extremist’ individuals acting on their own, but a broader colonialist settler mobilisation project that is funded and supported by members of the Zionist movement both locally and internationally.

The settlers are the visible tip of the spear, carrying out the violence directly on our lands and bodies. They function as a paramilitary force that has been unleashed on the West Bank to create new ‘facts on the ground’ by stealing Palestinian land and evicting Palestinians from these areas.

The army and the police, meanwhile, create the legal and physical infrastructure that allows this violence to continue. They declare ‘security zones’, restrict our movements, look the other way when attacks happen, delay or refuse enforcement of court decisions, and then appear just enough to preserve the illusion that there is some kind of law or order being applied equally.

We are told that we can seek justice through the courts, and we have tried to do so, investing time, energy, and limited resources into these cases. We even ‘won’ one of them.

But a legal victory that is not enforced becomes a type of trap. The settlers remain, the outpost is rebuilt, the damage continues. Instead of protecting us, the legal system can end up disciplining us and keeping our resistance within tightly controlled, time-consuming, and often futile channels, while the reality on the ground keeps shifting in the settlers’ favour.

Our belief in sumud

At a more personal and communal level, this has deep psychological and social effects. Our days and nights are now structured around uncertainty. Will they come today? What will they destroy this time? How do we protect our elders, our children, our livelihoods, when the people attacking us are armed, protected, and feel completely untouchable?

Instead of planning for harvests or improvements to our land, we plan for documentation, for court dates, for emergency responses to attacks. The constant need to ‘prove’ what is happening to us by filming, by collecting evidence, by explaining ourselves again and again only adds another layer of exhaustion. It is not just our crops and equipment being taken; it is our time, our sense of security, and our ability to live a normal, dignified life.

At the same time, our choice not to respond with physical violence, despite everything, is not a sign of weakness or acceptance. It is a strategic and moral decision forced on us by a hugely unequal balance of power. Any physical confrontation with armed settlers backed by the army would likely end with us being arrested, injured, or killed and then blamed for ‘escalation’.

By remaining present on our lands, documenting what is done to us, and insisting on using whatever legal, political, and social tools are available, we are trying to assert a different kind of strength: one based on sumud (steadfastness), on refusing to disappear quietly, and on making it harder for this process of dispossession to remain invisible.

We are not giving up

For people in Australia, there are three urgent things I would ask. The first is: inform yourselves beyond the headlines and do it now, not later. Do not accept language like ‘clashes’ or ‘tensions’ at face value. Ask who has the guns, who has the backing of a state, who is being designated a terrorist or extremist group, and who is simply trying to harvest their olives and grapes in peace.

The second is: use your voice and your political weight. Talk to your MPs, your unions, your churches, your community organisations. Ask why Australia is not yet taking concrete steps, such as enforcing sanctions and restrictions on fundraising, to stop money and political cover flowing to groups and individuals involved in this kind of violence. If other governments can recognise these settlers as extremist or terrorist actors and sanction them, there is no good reason for Australia to remain passive.

Lastly, I would ask Australians to remember that your choices, even as consumers and citizens far away, reach us quickly and directly. Supporting Palestinian communities, human rights organisations and legal groups that document and challenge these abuses makes a difference on the ground. Question trade and investment that normalises or profits from the Zionist project, because that economic support helps keep this machinery running.

I want to be very clear: we are not giving up. We are not surrendering our land, our dignity or our humanity, no matter how much pressure is put on us. Our presence on this land, our refusal to leave, our decision to keep planting, rebuilding and documenting is an act of steadfastness and defiance.