In the occupied West Bank, a father says
a final goodbye to his son.
>> Safe Masala was just 20. A Palestinian
American, he was working at an ice cream
shop in Florida, but came here to spend
time with his relatives.
>> Instead, they buried him and his closest
childhood friend. The pair had been
visiting family farmland in Singinjil
when Safe's father back in America got a
phone call from Safe's brother.
>> Something has happened to Safe.
>> He was breathing at that moment. Uh but
the problem is that they needed a uh an
ambulance. They needed paramedics. They
needed some sort of medical attention
that they couldn't get because of the
Israeli army was preventing that. Mobile
phone footage taken by a local farmer
shows a Palestinian ambulance
desperately trying to maneuver away from
two pickup trucks.
This paramedic was on duty that day,
responding to reports of attacks by
Israeli settlers.
>> When we arrived, settlers blocked our
way, attacked us, broke the ambulance's
rear window and siren, even though I had
an injured person inside.
Then the masked men attack again. Video
taken from inside the ambulance shows
what happened next.
Quick, they're trapping us. Go, go, they
shout.
I turned to get away, but a group of
settlers chased us by car and they threw
a rock at the windshield, shattering it.
Paramedics managed to reach some of the
injured by foot. In all, 28 Palestinians
needed medical treatment.
It was nightfall by the time they got to
safe, who'd been badly beaten, and by
then it was too late.
His friend Muhammad, also dead from a
gunshot wound. It fell to the village
mayor to certify their deaths.
>> The settlers reacted violently when
villagers went back to their own
farmland. As soon as they stepped onto
it, the settlers launched their attack.
>> But since October the 7th, Israel itself
has also increased its encroachment onto
Palestinian land. This is the wall the
military is building around Sinjel. It
says for security reasons, although 45
local families claim they can no longer
access their land or their livelihoods.
A record number of new Israeli
checkpoints and illegal outposts has
left Sinjil and neighboring villages
feeling increasingly under siege. Rakhan
like safe regularly visits his family
here from America.
>> Past 7 p.m. nobody goes outside because
if you do, you will not have a car no
more. They will break your car, throw
rocks, kick your car. There's a chance
you might get shot. You never know what
could happen. And that's why everyone
here is afraid of the situation because
it's not like how it was before. We used
to have two roads leading to the Ma. We
used to have a road from the west and
then we used to have a road you have a
road from the east. They put a gate on
the road from the west where it used to
take us 15 minutes to get to Jericho.
Now it takes us almost an hour. They
closed that road ever since October 7th
and and we can never go to that road
again.
>> But Safe's death has also brought
defiance. They target us, you know, and
they make it hard on us and they try as
much as they can to make our lives as
miserable as as it could be. But I just
feel we can't give up.
>> As an American, his son's death brought
promises of investigation. But while the
world's gaze is elsewhere, the rising
number of deaths here often go unnoticed
and unmarked.
Rachel Younger, ITV News.
Well, there are fears that this kind of
violence is only going to worsen in the
face of what looks like a new push to
build more settlements in the West Bank.
It is home to 3.3 million Palestinians.
There are already 700,000 illegal
settlers living in the occupied West
Bank. And a controversial plan to
further increase the number of settlers
has just been approved by Israel's
government. It would effectively cut off
the West Bank from occupied East
Jerusalem and end Palestinian hopes of
establishing their own state. And amid
all that, the violence has continued
with an estimated 1,000 Palestinians
killed by the Israeli military and
settlers since the 7th of October.
Safe's death is just one example of
something many fear could become more
common.