ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Soon after Donald Trump won the presidential election, right-wing Israeli officials got to work on a plan to take full control over parts of the West Bank. They see Trump as an ally. Meanwhile, Palestinians are worried about what a new Trump administration means for them. NPR's Michele Kelemen visited a Palestinian town already feeling the squeeze.
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MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Nahalin is a town near Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It was once prosperous, known for its agricultural products.
RIZIK: Vegetables and fruits, stonefruit, all of it. Fruits, etc.
KELEMEN: Rizik is a local farmer who doesn't want to give his last name for fear of retribution. He says, ever since the Hamas-led attack from Gaza on Israel in October of last year, he has faced more harassment from local Jewish settlers, and now he can't properly tend his fields.
RIZIK: (Speaking Arabic).
KELEMEN: "We approach our land with fear, and we leave the land with fear," he says.
WAFA NAJAJRA: (Speaking Arabic).
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KELEMEN: A few minutes' drive away, we arrive on the edge of Nahalin with municipal engineer Wafa Najajra. She wants to show us how the Israelis blocked the road to a nearby spring.
NAJAJRA: After October 7, we cannot reach this land. We cannot farm any plant or trees or...
KELEMEN: Switching to Arabic, she explains why there's so much trash everywhere here. She says it's hard to get trash trucks in and out of the town because of the road closures. There are 10,000 people living in Nahalin. It's surrounded by seven Israeli settlements, including one new outpost built in recent months.
NAJAJRA: (Speaking Arabic).
KELEMEN: Najajra says she works in the municipality, so she's seen the Israeli plans to build roads connecting these settlements and a new sewage treatment plant. She says, that means more land confiscations. To stop such land grabs, the Biden administration imposed targeted sanctions on settlers. But right-wing politicians in Israel see Trump's victory as a time to move forward. Israel's hard-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, boasts that 2025 will be the year that Israel fully takes over the West Bank. Such blatant statements has a leading Palestinian politician, Sabri Saidam, very worried.
SABRI SAIDAM: Smotrich is not hiding any of his actions. He is quite clearly saying that which was not the case in the past. There were intentions in the past. There were speculations. Now, you have somebody who walks the talk.
KELEMEN: Saidam is deputy director general of Fatah, the party of the Palestinian authority president who refused to deal with Trump during his first term. Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and closed the consulate, which dealt with Palestinian affairs. But Saidam has now heard Trump talk about peace.
SAIDAM: We are hoping to see a different version of Trump - Trump 2.0. We are not in any way boycotting the new administration. We are adopting a wait-and-see approach.
KELEMEN: But he says Trump should understand that annexation in land grabs will make an already tense situation worse. Settler violence in the West Bank has skyrocketed ever since the Hamas attack from Gaza. The U.N. says at least 750 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, and Israeli sources say thousands of Palestinians have been detained. Here again is Sabri Saidam.
SAIDAM: Another swelling is happening in the West Bank. People wake up to see their territory being confiscated. You are living in a ticking bomb kind of mood now.
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KELEMEN: In Nahalin, neighbors are cutting wood near the ruins of Ibrahim Awad's home. The engineer says Israeli bulldozers destroyed his house just a week ago, after he was told he didn't have the right to build there.
IBRAHIM AWAD: We are spending all of our money in our buildings. And immediately, suddenly, someone came and destroyed my home. Why? Why? Israel destroyed our economics, destroyed our future, destroyed our life.
KELEMEN: He says, this is something a real estate man like Trump should understand. Awad hopes the incoming president comes here to see how Palestinians want to do business and have normal lives.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, in Nahalin, in the West Bank. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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