Last month, I visited the occupied West Bank – against Foreign Office travel advise – to meet with Palestinian communities, hear their stories, and bear witness to the daily realities of life under Israel’s illegal occupation. As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and a long-standing campaigner for Palestinian rights, I did not arrive uninformed. I have travelled regularly to the West Bank over many years and am well acquainted with the apartheid regime that Israel has established there. Yet the horrors I encountered still shocked me – not because they were new, but because of their scale, pace, and the growing sense of impunity surrounding them.

During our stay there were raids in towns including Jenin, Hebron and even Bethlehem. Each day, more raids, more arrests, and more land grabs. Palestinians spoke of living in a state of constant anxiety – of sleepless nights, stress-related illnesses, and a growing lack of faith in the ability of the legal system to protect them. Settlers can come, dispossess, and destroy, and the courts are often powerless to prevent this while the IDF largely supports and protects them.

In the village of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills, we saw a once-thriving community hemmed in by settlers on either side. The settlers have divided the village in two, building a road, planting Israeli flags, and stopping the villagers from reaching their grazing grounds. The villagers face constant harassment and countless demolition orders – even a patch of astroturf laid for children to play football has been slated for removal.

At the Tent of Nations, a Palestinian Christian family farm outside Bethlehem, nearby settlement infrastructure continues to expand, including a new road that cuts across the family’s land, preventing them from cultivating the other side. Daud, the Tent’s owner, uses legal means to protect his land but the Israeli courts keep delaying judgements and in the meantime the settlers encroach more and more.

In Bethlehem, we heard from those affected by Israel’s plans to clear Palestinians from the vicinity of the religious site Rachel’s Tomb. Representatives from Wi’am, a grassroots civil society organisation, told us how the IDF has been measuring and photographing their land and buildings situated right against the ‘security’ wall and adjacent to Rachel’s Tomb. Meanwhile, Clair Anastas, a Palestinian businesswoman, has only a few weeks to appeal the loss of her home, shop, and guesthouse as settlers nearby push to expand their illegal settlement.

After we retuned we learnt of new Israeli West Bank measures that will make it easier for settlers to purchase land while expanding Israeli control in Palestinian-administrated areas, amounting to a de-facto-annexation of the territory. This explains some of my experiences (Rachel’s Tomb is one of the areas where Israeli powers are set to expand) – although creeping annexation has been apparent for several years already.

Across the West Bank, ordinary aspects of life – getting to work, running a school, exporting goods, visiting neighbouring towns – are shaped by a dense web of permits, checkpoints, closures and bureaucratic obstacles. Communities are enclosed by gates controlled by Israeli authorities, whose arbitrary closures leave residents trapped and reliant on unpredictable patterns.

Usama, a Christian Palestinian tour guide, described how arbitrary decisions at checkpoints create vulnerability to sudden entrapment. One time, Usama passed a checkpoint for a mosque tour and on his return was prevented from leaving the same way. The other available checkpoint led to an area under Israeli lockdown, and if he went there Usama risked arrest and could even have been shot. Despite this, the soldier on duty refused to let him through, and it was only after a change in officers that he finally escaped.

In Taybeh, the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank, the distillery and brewery struggle to export their goods due to the countless checkpoints and restrictions placed on Palestinian products by Israel. While we were there, there was no electricity for several hours, and we were told that both electricity and water are cut off daily. There are generators, but obtaining fuel is often difficult. We heard the usual stories of illegal settlements, attacks, property damage, stolen land, and restrictions.

At Hope Secondary School, a non-denominational Christian school near Bethlehem, we learned that children must learn Hebrew to navigate encounters with soldiers outside the school, which is surrounded by five checkpoints with settlements just a few hundred yards away. On one occasion, children were playing with pinecones when one was blown out the school grounds and hit a passing Jewish settler. The settler called the IDF who came to arrest the child.

The horrors and daily injustices I witnessed are too numerous to catalogue in this article. I’d encourage those interested to read the full account of my travels, available on the LDFP website.

The title of this account was a quote from a Palestinian and repeated in different words by others. Though concerned about their children’s future, the Palestinians I encountered were determined not to be forced out, to hang on for as long as possible.

* Miranda Pinch is a member of the Winchester local party and Communications Lead for the Lib Dem Friends of Palestine and has been a regular visitor to Palestine and Israel for many years. She is also part of the 'Holocaust survivors and descendants against the Gaza genocide' network.