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Mud was rising on the observe. It hung within the sizzling noon air because the white jeep got here in direction of us. The driving force was lower than a minute away.
“I believe it is Moshe Sharvit,” stated Gil Alexander, 72, a religious non secular Jew who tries to guard Palestinian shepherds from intimidation by Jewish settlers.
Over the past yr we have been documenting his work with shepherds within the northern Jordan Valley, within the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution.
The person approaching us was positioned underneath sanctions by Britain and the EU final yr after they stated he had used “bodily aggression, threatened households at gunpoint, and destroyed property as a part of a focused and calculated effort to displace Palestinian communities”.
In a case reported by our colleagues at BBC Eye Investigates final yr, a Palestinian grandmother alleged that Moshe Sharvit had compelled her to go away her household dwelling in October 2023. Ayesha Shtayyeh additionally stated he pointed a gun at her head and threatened to kill her.
“We have been right here for 50 years…What have I ever completed to him?” she requested when BBC Eye interviewed her.
She stated her household’s troubles started after Moshe Sharvit established a so-called ‘outpost’- a settlement that’s unlawful underneath each Israeli and worldwide regulation – chasing away the household’s sheep, damaging property and always threatening them. The alleged incident with the gun was the ultimate straw.
Moshe Sharvit didn’t reply to BBC Eye’s requests for a response to Ayesha’s account.
Again on the mountainside, the person accused of this violence stopped his automotive and approached us. Nodding in direction of Gil Alexander he requested us: “Are you aware he is a really harmful man?”
When our translator defined to Moshe Sharvit we had been from the BBC he stated: “Ah the BBC… nice lovers of Israel…” He went on to name us unhealthy and harmful folks.
Addressing our translator he stated: “So, do you perceive that they are the people who find themselves most harmful to the State of Israel?”
Then he phoned the police, asking them to return to the scene. When he wasn’t calling the police he filmed us filming him.
Moshe Sharvit and Gil Alexander characterize starkly completely different visions of Israel’s future.
Moshe Sharvit believes all the West Financial institution – which settlers and the Israeli authorities name Judea and Samaria – got by God to the Jews.
On this he’s supported by senior ministers within the authorities, together with the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, and the Minister of Public Safety, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Each males are settlers and leaders of far-right ultranationalist events.
Smotrich has stated Gaza will likely be “completely destroyed” and that its folks will likely be “completely despairing, understanding that there is no such thing as a hope and nothing to search for in Gaza and will likely be on the lookout for relocation to start a brand new life somewhere else”.
The ‘different locations’ he envisages are overseas international locations. Ben-Gvir, who’s chargeable for the police, has convictions for inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organisation.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, depends on the help of the far-right settler motion to maintain his authorities in energy.
He criticised the sanctions imposed on Moshe Sharvit and different settlers, saying his authorities considered the transfer “with nice severity”. US sanctions in opposition to Moshe Sharvit had been dropped when President Donald Trump got here to energy.
The UN’s high court docket dominated final yr that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is in opposition to worldwide regulation and that every one settlement exercise is illegitimate.
Israel rejects this and argues that settlements are mandatory for safety, citing deadly assaults by Palestinian gunmen on settlers, such because the killing of three folks final January within the West Financial institution.
Settlement enlargement is anathema to Gil Alexander. He considers himself a Zionist, however inside the present borders of Israel.
These are the frontiers that existed earlier than it seized the West Financial institution within the 1967 Center East struggle, after neighbouring Arab international locations launched a shock assault.
He’s a part of a community referred to as the Jordan Valley Activists – Moshe Sharvit calls them “anarchists” – providing solidarity, and dealing for peaceable co-existence with the Palestinians.
“What they [the settlers] wish to see occur,” Gil Alexander advised us, “[is] that it will likely be an space utterly freed from Arabs. It is not Moshe. It is all of the folks above him who despatched him right here. That means from the highest”.
Moshe Sharvit’s want to have the Jordan Valley empty of Palestinians is shared by the chief of the regional council, a government-supported physique, David Elhayani, who has visited the sanctioned settler.
In his air conditioned workplace about 15km (9 miles) from Moshe Sharvit’s settler outpost he advised us “the notion of settler violence is an invention of the anarchist, excessive left meant to hurt the settlement picture”.
As for the way forward for the Palestinians, he was emphatic. They need to go to neighbouring Jordan.
“This nation must be freed from Arabs. It is the one method. It is a world curiosity. Why world? As a result of the minute there will not be Arabs right here it will likely be a Jewish nation for the Jews who will not have to harm one another, there will not be battle, there will not be something.”
Gil Alexander and Moshe Sharvit have a historical past of antagonism. Throughout an altercation on a Palestinian farmer’s land in January 2023, Moshe Sharvit says Gil Alexander tried to grab his firearm from its holster.
Whereas talking to our translator he produced a video of the incident on his telephone.
“You possibly can see Gil Alexander. Identical hat and glasses. That is me. Right here you see he grabs my gun.”
Gil Alexander says he was appearing in self-defence after Moshe Sharvit had grabbed his strolling stick, and the telephone of his pal and violently pushing it.
He says he feared Moshe Sharvit was going to make use of the weapon. Because of this, Moshe Sharvit received a restraining order which forbids Gil Alexander from being inside 2.5km (1.5 miles) of his farm.
The police have charged Gil Alexander with unlawful possession of a weapon (the one he allegedly tried to take from Moshe Sharvit) and assault. The difficulty will likely be thought-about by the Israeli courts.
Moshe Sharvit himself is the topic of a restraining order forbidding him to strategy a Palestinian household dwelling close to his outpost for six months, since March this yr.
Throughout our encounter the settler claimed that Gil Alexander had breached his restraining order by taking us to the excessive floor overlooking the valley. The peace activist advised us later that he had mistakenly strayed simply over half a kilometre inside the world of the order.
Though Moshe Sharvit’s settlement is illegitimate, even underneath Israeli regulation, it has not been eliminated.
Human rights organisations and quite a few eyewitnesses testify that the Israeli military and police often stand by whereas settlers assault Palestinian villages.
The violence has escalated sharply because the 7 October 2023 Hamas assault on Israel during which about 1,200 folks had been killed and 251 kidnapped, and which triggered the Gaza struggle.
In response to a report issued by the UN workplace for Humanitarian Affairs there have been 1,804 assaults by settlers in opposition to Palestinians within the interval January 2024 to March 2025.
The Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din (There may be Legislation), reported that solely 3% of complaints made in opposition to settlers resulted in a conviction. In six days final month – from 22 to twenty-eight April – the UN recorded 14 incidents involving settlers that left 36 Palestinians injured.
Within the tense ambiance on the mountainside, and eager to keep away from any escalation, we determined to go away.
As we walked away, Moshe Sharvit went to his jeep and drove forward of us, stopping the place the observe turned down the mountain. Our method out was blocked. There was no-one we may attraction to aside from the person stopping us from leaving.
Once more, he phoned the police asking them to return. Gil Alexander phoned the police and his lawyer. Our group was anxious that extra settlers would come.
Then one thing stunning occurred. I advised to Moshe Sharvit that he ought to conform to be interviewed. After a short pause, he stated: “Carry the digicam.”
What adopted was much less an interview, than a collection of declarations. He was doing the work of God, he stated.
Why did native Bedouin shepherds say they had been very afraid of him? I requested.
“No, that could be a lie. They’re telling tales so the world will suppose we’re loopy. It is not true. It is all lies which are constructed on lies of dozens of years of mendacity…” he stated.
“The Arabs, because the formation of the nation and earlier than – all of the previous 77 years they have been preoccupied with harming the folks of Israel, harming the land of Israel and inflicting the nation of Israel to be depressing and pitiful. However they do not perceive that the tougher they struggle, the Lion will wake from his sleep and inside in the future we’ll finish this story.”
He repeated the analogy of the Lion later within the interview saying, in what appeared like ominous phrases, that the Palestinians had been “pushing the lion so laborious into the nook that there will likely be no selection left however to complete this story”.
“7 October was small. In the future it’s going to be massive.”
As for peaceable co-existence reminiscent of Gil Alexander helps, he stated there was “no such factor as peace with enemies who attempt to destroy you”.
Moshe Sharvit’s brother Harel was killed preventing in Gaza in December 2023.
His world is the pastureland, the stony hills of the Jordan Valley, his sheep and cattle, the mattress and breakfast he has opened.
He produced a shiny video, replete with a backing observe of American nation music, to advertise his enterprise.
He spoke with contempt for the British sanctions in opposition to him. They had been a brand new type of antisemitism, he claimed.
“The minute somebody tries to harm me I get stronger. My spirit…I obtain energies, my spirit continues on its mission, I proceed advancing ahead and planting roots deep into the land of Israel. I am not bothered by Britain or America or anybody.”
Then he drove away. We had been free to maneuver on. Later as we had been having lunch in a café about 15km (9 miles) away, a policeman appeared, on the lookout for Gil Alexander.
He went with the police officer for questioning. After about an hour he returned, telling us he had been ordered to not enter the Jordan Valley for 2 weeks. He plans to lodge his personal grievance in opposition to Moshe Sharvit over the incident.
We went to Gil Alexander’s dwelling in a kibbutz inside Israel that overlooks the Valley. Gunmen from the Palestinian metropolis of Jenin fired on the kibbutz two years in the past.
Gil Alexander is just not a pacifist. If he’s attacked by Hamas or some other group, he’ll defend himself.
He stated: “A son of our mates, two months in the past he was killed right here by a terrorist. He was a soldier within the reserves, 46 years previous with six kids. He volunteered for the reserves to guard me.”
“If the military hadn’t been there, they’d have come right here. He was killed whereas defending me. And at the moment he’s buried subsequent to my two sons.”
However Gil Alexander appeared weary as we sat consuming tea amid the brilliant pink flowers of his well-tended backyard, and the fluttering yellow flags that symbolise Israel’s hostages held in Gaza.
He spoke of a beloved nephew killed preventing in Lebanon in an earlier struggle.
Did he not, I questioned, on the age of 72, take into consideration retiring from the battle and having fun with his backyard? He laughed.
There was no likelihood of that. After two of his sons took their very own lives – one was within the military, the opposite was about to enter the army – he had discovered a goal in working for what he calls the “humanitarian” beliefs of Judaism.
“After the tragedies of my sons, if I do not discover which means in life, I am going to go loopy… And the issues I do, are issues I imagine in. And these are issues I additionally received from my father who was within the French underground throughout World Struggle Two and fought for French liberation however was in opposition to any sort of occupation and stated, ‘Occupation is Occupation.'”
Two days after our encounter with Moshe Sharvit, a lone lady peace activist filmed him banging on the window of her automotive and rocking the automobile.
The lady is clearly frightened by the intimidation. Moshe Sharvit acts as if he has nothing to concern.
With further reporting by Oren Rosenfeld and Nik Millard.
