West Bank Activists Banned for Two Months After Settler Attack in Umm al-Khair

Adele Shoko says she can no longer use her left hand.

The Russian activist told The New Arab that she, fellow campaigner Andrey X, and US journalist Jasper Nathaniel were attacked by armed settlers on Wednesday in Umm al-Khair, a Palestinian community in the Masafer Yatta area of the southern West Bank. According to Shoko's account, the attackers included Tomer Liani, a settler from the nearby Havat Maon outpost, who she says beat her, stole her phone and glasses, and repeatedly threatened to shoot Andrey X.

"So all of that happened and the settler wasn't punished. But for some reason we were punished and now we can't do our work," Shoko told The New Arab.

Andrey X and Nathaniel were arrested after the attack and accused by Israeli forces of assaulting the settlers, Shoko said. Both were cleared of all charges following a court hearing, but the three were barred from entering the West Bank for two months. Shoko said she and her colleagues still do not know what comes next, with another interrogation scheduled for Sunday.

The allegations against Liani, including the claim that he was not punished for the attack, rest on Shoko's firsthand account and have not been independently confirmed. Peace Now, the Israeli monitoring group, has separately and repeatedly raised concerns about the safety of Umm al-Khair's residents, accusing Israeli authorities of failing to provide protection from settler violence in the area.

Shoko said she believes the attention she and her colleagues have drawn through social media documentation of settler violence since the start of Israel's war on Gaza has made them targets. She pointed to an earlier incident, which she described as widely reported, in which Andrey X was arrested by a force of 12 soldiers and seven police officers. She argued that international visibility has so far shielded the group from harsher treatment. "If not for the amount of attention that the world is giving to us and what is happening to us, we would be in Israeli jail," she said.

Shoko said the restrictions on foreign activists come as Palestinian journalists face harsher consequences for similar documentation work. She said multiple Palestinian journalists remain in administrative detention without charge, and that at least three of her own friends were detained and had their homes raided in the past month, though she did not name them. The Committee to Protect Journalists has separately condemned attacks on Palestinian and foreign journalists in the West Bank, including incidents involving settlers during the olive harvest season, though it was not cited specifically on this case.

"It's getting scary to do our work," Shoko said, "especially during the olive harvest, because it's becoming a big problem that we are showing this escalation of violence."