Under Israeli Settler Attacks, I Feel I Am Not Alive
Ruqayya Rabe’i was three months pregnant when a mob of Israelis invaded the village where she lives. She spoke with Jacobin about her lost pregnancy and how settler violence seeks to destroy the basis of Palestinian life.
A paramedic transports an injured Palestinian into the Ramallah Governmental Hospital after arriving from the village of Al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, following an attack allegedly carried out by Israeli settlers on August 30, 2026. (Zain Jaafar / AFP via Getty Images)
In the West Bank village of At-Tuwani this July 19, Ruqayya Rabe’i, three months pregnant, lay in her room beside her four sleeping daughters. At 12:30 a.m., the first stones hit her home. She rushed to check the front door. There in the living room, she found her fifteen-year-old son, Usayd, sleeping directly below a window where, according to Ruqayya, several settlers were armed with guns and knives and trying to force their way in.
She tried to shake her son awake, but he didn’t stir. When the settlers noticed her, she fled, certain that if they saw him, they would shoot.
The window was shattered, a chemical compound poured through it, and the frame went up in flames, Ruqayya said. She called her husband, who was working in the nearby city of Yatta, frantic, believing at that moment that her son had been killed.
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