Jihad Suleiman Al-Sawafta, 46, has lived on his farm in the occupied West Bank village of Bardala his entire life. But when Israeli settlers showed up in December, Al-Sawafta said his land, and his livelihood, shrank to a fraction of its former self.

“They crowded the area. They took thousands of dunams (1,000 square meters) from Bardala and its grazing lands,” he said, referring to his Palestinian town in the northern part of the West Bank. He added that the Jordan Valley, a fertile strip of land long considered the West Bank’s breadbasket, had been “largely emptied”of its Palestinian residents.

Herding outposts like the one set up on Al-Sawafta’s land are often established by Israeli settlers on hilltops with a few caravans and sometimes livestock to mark their claim. Monitoring groups say they are notorious for swallowing up vast swathes of land and prohibiting Palestinian residents from moving freely. The outposts are illegal under both Israeli and international law, and the state is not allowed to finance or build on them.

The number of Israeli herding outposts has dramatically increased since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition took power in 2022 on a platform of settlement expansion. The government includes ministers who are themselves settlers and want to annex the occupied territory to Israel. In the wake of the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, which triggered Israel’s invasion of Gaza, settlers have accelerated land grabs with support from the state.

Peace Now and Kerem Navot estimate that shepherding outposts, occupied by a few hundred settlers, now cover almost 14% of the West Bank. Some of the unauthorized outposts are run by extremist Israeli settlers and settler groups that were sanctioned under the Biden administration, according to the monitoring groups.

Of the total land seized by settlers in the West Bank since the 1990s using herding outposts, 70% has been taken in the last two and half years alone, the report found.

‘Empowered to do whatever they want’

There is no official planning approval for outposts, unlike officially recognized Jewish settlements, which tend to be larger, more organized urban developments. Settlements are considered illegal under international law and by much of the international community, but Israel disputes that.

For Palestinians living near the outposts, their expansion in recent years has often meant losing access to their land and natural resources, as roads, fences, and settler activity gradually cut them off.

The land grabs have gone hand-in-hand with an escalation in violence by Israeli security forces and settlers against Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s defense minister said at the end of February that he had instructed the military to “prevent the return of residents” who had been displaced by Israel’s military operations in four refugee camps in the northern part of the territory beginning January 21. The United Nations estimated that some 40,000 have been forced to flee their homes.

There are also mounting concerns among Palestinians that US President Donald Trump may endorse annexation of the occupied territory, which is home to more than 3 million Palestinians. “We’re discussing that with many of your representatives,” Trump said in a joint press conference with Netanyahu in Washington, DC, in February. “People do like the idea, but we haven’t taken a position on it yet.”

His proposal for Gaza to be emptied of its inhabitants and developed have raised alarm among rights groups and Palestinian communities, who worry a similar rhetoric could be applied to the occupied West Bank.

Israel seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967. It annexed East Jerusalem, which is also considered occupied under international law, in 1980.

According to the report from Peace Now and Kerem Navot, more than 60 Palestinian shepherding communities have been forcibly displaced since July 2022 – the majority of these since October 7.

“The idea behind it is clear, it is to take the open areas in the West Bank to make sure Palestinians cannot access them, and eventually to hand them over to Israeli settlers.”

In July last year, the United Nations’ top court said Israel should end its decades-long occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, evacuating settlers from the territories designated for a future Palestinian state and halting any new settlement activity. Israel’s foreign minister at the time rejected the non-binding ruling as “fundamentally wrong” and one-sided.

Despite outposts being illegal even under Israeli law, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said there is a “consistent pattern of Israeli authorities’ involvement, assistance and financing of the construction of outposts, as well as their operation.”

Documents uncovered by Peace Now last year showed how the Israeli government has budgeted millions to protect the small, unauthorized farms. The monitoring group said the money paid for vehicles, drones, cameras, generators, electric gates, light poles, solar panels and fences.

The Israeli government approved 75 million shekels ($21 million) in December 2023 for providing security in the West Bank to what it called “young settlements.” Orit Strock, the Minister of Settlements and National Mission, told the Associated Press that the funds were coordinated with the Defense Ministry and “carried out in accordance with all laws.”

Israeli law affords the WZO semi-governmental status, giving it authority “for the development and settlement of the country.” The WZO’s Settlement Division, which describes itself as an “arm of the Israeli state” and is funded by Israeli public money, is responsible for managing the allocation of land to “form and strengthen the settlement of Jews in periphery areas, by increasing the hold on the lands of the country that were passed onto the division by the government of Israel,” according to its website.

Most of the land seized by settlers for illegal shepherding outposts is not classified as Israeli state land, according to mapping data from the Israeli Civil Administration analyzed by Peace Now and Kerem Navot. Nearly 60% of the land, around 470 square kilometers, is either privately owned by Palestinians, has unclear ownership, or falls within Palestinian Authority territory, the report said.

Daraghma said that settlers regularly chase away his sheep and terrorize the community’s children late into the night. “They threaten us that if we go up to this mountain there, they will come to us at night. They say, ‘If you go here, we will come to take your children,’” he said.

A few weeks later, he said his family was forced to flee.

Mimicking the motion of combing locks of hair with a brush, Sama Tubail stares at her reflection in a mirror and begins to cry.

For the eight-year-old, the movement brings back memories of a life before October 7, 2023 – when she had long hair and played outside with her friends in northern Gaza’s Jabalya. But since then, Sama and her family have been among the estimated 1.9 million Palestinians forcibly displaced from their homes, fleeing first to the enclave’s southern Rafah region under Israeli military orders. As the violence escalated, Sama moved to a displacement camp in central Gaza’s Khan Younis.

Israel launched a war in Gaza after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people – mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities, and kidnapping more than 250. Israel’s military offensive, paused for almost two months under a fragile ceasefire deal, has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency, estimated in a report last June that nearly all of Gaza’s 1.2 million children need psychological support, especially those exposed to repeated traumatic events.

A week after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced in January, the UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told the UN Security Council that “a generation has been traumatized.”

“Children have been killed, starved and frozen to death,” Fletcher said, adding that “some died before their first breath – perishing with their mothers in childbirth.”

‘Why won’t my hair grow?’

Last year, doctors diagnosed that Sama’s hair loss was a result of “nervous shock,” specifically after her neighbor’s house in Rafah was hit by an Israeli airstrike in August. The traumatic upending of her daily life since October 7 also likely contributed to her alopecia, a condition that causes hair loss, they said.

A report late last year by the War Child Alliance and Gaza-based Community Training Centre for Crisis Management highlights the severe psychological toll on children of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza over the past year. The report, based on a survey of more than 500 caregivers of vulnerable children, found that 96% of children in those circumstances felt that death was imminent and nearly half – 49% – had expressed a “wish to die” because of Israel’s assault.

Sama’s mental anguish intensified after she was bullied by other children for her hair loss, leading her to retreat indoors. Outside, she wears a pink bandana to cover her scalp.

“I want to die and have my hair grow in Paradise; God willing.”

With the tenuous ceasefire in place, tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians started moving back home toward northern Gaza. Sama’s house was flattened in Israel’s bombardment and she and her family remained in Khan Younis, unable to afford travel costs to return home.

“Transportation costs are too high, and even if we go, there is no water, and we don’t know where we would stay,” she continued.

Mental health in Gaza

Providing mental health services in Gaza has always come with challenges. But Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei, director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), explained that during Israel’s 15-month assault his staff had also suffered trauma which made it difficult to treat others.

“They still carry on and try to bring some hope and support to families (while) working in shelters.”

One technique he said the GCMHP employs is drawing therapy, which allows children to express their feelings through non-verbal communication. He recalled an instance in which giving a child the space to draw enabled them to talk to a GCMHP psychologist about their pain.

“(The child said) my friends are in heaven, but one of them, they found him without his head,” Abu Jamei said. “How could he go to heaven while his head is not there? (The child) continued to cry.”

While the fragile ceasefire held, Abu Jamei said the GCMHP was employing a mental health plan to treat patients which could last for up to six months. GCMHP workers were “relieved” by the pause in fighting, he added, but still felt a “heaviness of the work that awaits them.”

‘A drone came and killed them’

Seven-year-old Anas Abu Eish and his sister Doa, aged eight, live with their grandmother Om-Alabed in a displacement camp in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis. The siblings suffered the loss of their parents in an Israeli strike.

Om-Alabed said the children had been deeply affected by what happened and that Anas experiences moments of aggression whenever he sees other children being embraced by their mothers.

“I frequently remind people to be understanding, as he has lost not only his parents but also the safety, security, warmth, and affection (they) provided,” she said.

“They are interacting. I’ve seen children, they just look at you and they don’t say anything. They don’t cry, they just look at the space (around them), I worry about (those) children more,” Foa said.

Though their home is close by in Rafah, Anas and Doa remained in Al-Mawasi even after the truce was agreed, unable to return as it was under a “red zone” designation – an area considered likely to be targeted if hostilities resumed.

Om-Alabed said after the ceasefire was announced, they did travel back and found their house in ruins. It felt too dangerous to stay there. “We couldn’t handle it,” she said. “We are here waiting and dreaming that our red zone becomes a green zone so we can go back and put our tents over the rubble.”

“All the buildings are crashed into each other,” Om-Alabed continued. “To walk from here to there, you have to climb rubble as if you are climbing a mountain, just to get to our area.”

‘There was sand in my mouth, I was screaming’

In the same displacement camp, six-year-old Manal Jouda calmly recalls the night her home was destroyed, killing her parents and trapping her under the rubble. She described the terror of waiting to be rescued.

“There was sand in my mouth, I was screaming, they dug with a shovel, our neighbor was saying ‘this is Manal, this is Manal.’ I was awake, my eyes were opened under the rubble, my mouth was opened, and sand was coming into it,” she said.

“This is the kind of child I would follow to see if there was a way of reducing the pain her brain will hold later on,” Foa said of Manal.

Even with a ceasefire, children need stability to help aid their healing, Foa said. But she believes that with the right treatment, Palestinian children can make a partial recovery.

“They will never be the same as before the war, but they will recover in the sense that they could be functional,” she said.

“They can be content most of the time, not be distressed, not being dysfunctional and go on with their life.”

But for children like Sama, stability remains out of reach.

‘My friends have hair, and I don’t’

Heavy rain and strong winds have battered displacement camps, destroying makeshift tents and leaving the young girl and other Palestinian families with little shelter.

Even with a truce in place, her hair didn’t grow back and she wonders if it ever will.

“Every time my hair starts to grow, I look at it with hope, but then it falls out again,” she said.

Her mother explained that Sama feels ashamed of having no hair, even in front of her sisters, and feels she can’t restart her life until it regrows.

“Sama always told me ‘I want to go to the north to find my clothes and my memories,’” Om-Mohammed said.

“But now she has changed her mind and says ‘where would we go? We don’t have a home anymore; all my friends have hair, and I don’t.’”

A French politician has called on the US to give the Statue of Liberty back after suggesting that some Americans “have chosen to switch to the side of the tyrants.”

Raphael Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament who represents the small left-wing party Place Publique, made the comments at a rally on Sunday.

“Give us back the Statue of Liberty,” said Glucksmann. “It was our gift to you. But apparently you despise her.”

The statue was a gift of friendship to America from France. Inaugurated in 1886, it represents Libertas, the Roman liberty goddess, bearing a torch in her right hand and a tablet in her left hand with the date of the US Declaration of Independence.

Broken shackles lie underneath the statue’s drapery, to symbolize the end of all types of servitude and oppression.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt fired back at Glucksmann.

“My advice to that unnamed low-level French politician would be to remind them that it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now, so they should be very grateful to our great country,” she said.

Glucksmann then responded in a series of posts on X and Instagram.

He emphasized that his gratitude to the US “heroes” that fought against the Nazis in WWII is “eternal,” before making a contrast with US President Donald Trump’s recent attempts to negotiate a settlement between Russia and Ukraine, as well as Trump’s public spat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“The America of these heroes fought against tyrants, it did not flatter them. It was the enemy of fascism, not the friend of Putin. It helped the resistance and didn’t attack Zelensky,” he wrote.

“It is precisely because I am petrified by Trumps (sic) betrayal that I said yesterday in a rally that we could symbolically take back the Statue of Liberty if your government despised everything it symbolizes in your eyes, ours, and those of the world,” said Glucksmann.

“No one, of course, will come and steal the Statue of Liberty. The statue is yours. But what it embodies belongs to everyone,” he said.

“And if the free world no longer interests your government, then we will take up the torch, here in Europe.”

Glucksmann is co-president of the Place Publique party, which currently holds three seats in the European Parliament, as well as one in the French parliament and another in the country’s senate.

Despite his party’s small size, Glucksmann has received an increasing amount of attention in the French media, including an in-depth interview in political magazine Le Nouvel Obs published March 5, in which he underlined the importance that European powers step up their defense spending amid a reorienting of US policy priorities.

It has also been rumored that Glucksmann is planning to run for president in elections scheduled for early 2027.

A member of a small South African research team at a remote Antarctic base has accused a colleague of assault and pleaded for intervention, officials have said.

A “response plan to engage the individuals involved” was “immediately activated,” officials from South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), which supervises the base, said in a statement – but added that they had no plans to bring any of the team back home.

The DFFE said it received complaints of alleged assault involving two members of the overwintering team of nine on February 27 and was further investigating an allegation of sexual harassment. The department did not mention the names of those involved.

The intervention was revealed after a report from South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper detailed an email from the team that accused the man of attacking its leader and pleaded for help.

“His behavior has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing,” the author wrote in the email, according to the Sunday Times, adding: “I remain deeply concerned about my own safety, constantly wondering if I might become the next victim.”

South Africa is the only African nation that operates a research station in Antarctica, the world’s coldest continent, where it established a scientific base in 1960. Its Antarctic station known as SANAE IV typically houses a team of scientists for 13 months, the DFFE said, adding that the current group was dispatched on February 1.

“The Department confirms that there were no incidents that required any of the nine overwintering team members to be brought back to Cape Town,” its statement said about the assault allegations. “If such incidents occurred, the management team of the Department would have replaced such an overwintering team member with immediate effect.”

This is not the first case of assault involving a South African expedition team. In 2017, at a research base in the remote Marion Island, a research team member was reported to have “vandalized another colleague’s laptop with an axe because of a love triangle they were involved in,” according to a South African parliamentary monitoring group.

The DPPE explained that members of its research missions are evaluated ahead of expeditions “to ensure they are able to cope with the isolation and can work and live with others in the confined space of the bases.”

However, it added, “it is not uncommon that once individuals arrive at the extremely remote areas where the scientific bases are located, an initial adjustment to the environment is required.”