Palestinian says settlers took over West Bank home he was building for newlywed son

Mohammad Salameh was building a home for his family in the West Bank, where his recently engaged son was meant to start married life. Instead, before construction was complete, a group of Israeli settlers seized the property.

Video filmed earlier in the week and verified by Reuters showed at least six settlers moving around on the roof of the two-story house, which sits below a nearby hill in the Nablus-area Palestinian village of Jalud.

Salameh said appeals to the Israeli military and police brought no help. Now he fears his home, which like many others in the Palestinian territory is surrounded by Israeli settlements and smaller outposts, is lost forever. Other houses in the area could suffer the same fate, he said.

“The neighbor close by has built a two-story house, which they will probably take too,” said Salameh. “If we lose this house, they will lose theirs.”

“Only God knows if there is law and order, then they will leave,” he said of the settlers. “If they succeed in taking one, then the rest will follow.”

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Reuters was unable to reach the settlers for comment. One of them could be seen walking on the house’s roof on Thursday.

The IDF said it received a report regarding the house earlier this week and that “soldiers arrived at the area and quickly acted to disperse the gathering.” The military did not comment on the settlers’ continued presence in the house.

The IDF said law enforcement regarding actions by settlers in the West Bank is the responsibility of Israel’s police, which did not respond to a request for comment.

⚡️مستوطنون بحماية من قوات الاحتلال يستولون على منزل بقرية جالود جنوب نابلس pic.twitter.com/KueSqwAjzy

— ديوان (@DiwanDaily) July 1, 2026

Residents of Jalud say this week’s incident marks another troubling escalation because the settlers seized a house that was still under construction.

“They have now moved down to within no more than 100 meters from the last house in Jalud, which is also a house under construction belonging to a resident,” said Raed al-Haj Mohammad, head of the village council.

Jalud has faced five major settler attacks, he said, including the burning of homes, damage to vehicles and the uprooting of trees.

For Salameh, the dispute is painfully personal. Construction on the house stalled after the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, which led Israel to halt West Bank Palestinian laborers’ work in the country. As a result, Salameh’s son could not find work, and the family’s finances came under strain.

The seizure of Palestinian land by settlers is a longstanding feature of life in the West Bank, where about 500,000 Israelis live among roughly 3 million Palestinians.

Palestinians have for years reported damage to farmland, vandalism and attacks linked to settlement expansion. The attacks now occur daily but are rarely prosecuted.

A United Nations inquiry reported last month that Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian villages and agricultural land had surged since 2023, rising by 130% to a record pace of six times a day on average.

The United Nations and most countries — with the notable exception of the US under President Donald Trump — regard Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal under international law, citing the Fourth Geneva Convention’s prohibition on transferring a civilian population into occupied territory.

Israel rejects that position, saying the West Bank is disputed territory where there has been a Jewish presence for thousands of years. Palestinians consider the West Bank, together with Gaza and East Jerusalem, as the land for a future Palestinian state.

Even Israel’s staunchest allies, including the United States, have criticized settlement construction and condemned settler violence.

Nevertheless, and settlement expansion has accelerated under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest government, which relies on hardline pro-settlement parties to maintain its parliamentary majority.