The Fight for the West Bank

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Tabitha Brown. With YouTube Premium, I get ad-free videos, offline downloads, and so much more. Try YouTube Premium for two months free. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime.

**Loui Ridi** (0:20)
Hello?

**Rachel Abrams** (0:21)
Hi, Loui. This is Rachel Abrams from The Daily.

**Loui Ridi** (0:24)
Hi, Rachel.

**Rachel Abrams** (0:25)
Thank you so much for making time to speak with us.

**Loui Ridi** (0:27)
Thank you.

**Rachel Abrams** (0:28)
Where are you physically right now?

**Loui Ridi** (0:30)
I am currently in my house in the West Bank, under siege by Israeli settlers, extremists. We are not allowed to leave the property.
The settlers wants my family, the neighbor's family to leave. So simply they can steal the houses and take over. They want the entire land, the entire mountain, all the houses.

**Rachel Abrams** (1:01)
What's happening right now, Loui? Like, are there settlers outside that you can see from inside your house right now?

**Loui Ridi** (1:07)
Yes, I am watching them as we speak. There's three settlers. That's about 300 to 400 yards from me.
They brought couches and they sit in the sun. And moments ago, there's three soldiers. And I was watching, wondering what's the soldiers going to do to them? Are they going to arrest them? Are they going to remove them? Are they going to tell them it's a closed military zone? Because this is what they told me yesterday. Absolutely, absolutely, they did nothing. They just looked around. They talked to them probably for five minutes. And they just left them.
It's insane.

**Rachel Abrams** (1:51)
From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.
For the past year, there's been a huge increase in violence in the West Bank. Israeli settlers have been terrorizing Palestinians, setting fire to their property, uprooting their olive groves, and stealing their animals, all in an effort to drive them off their land. According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been injured, and more than 20 killed so far just this year. That's more than twice the number of killings, as in 2025 But the settlers seldom face any consequences for their actions, in part because they receive broad support from the Israeli government. Today, we talked to Palestinian-American Loui Ridi in the West Bank about the settlers that have arrived at his doorstep.
When we called Loui Ridi, he was in his house in Kustra, a small village of about 5,000 people in the northern West Bank. Loui talked to us from his bedroom, where he could look out the window and keep an eye on what was happening outside. I wonder whether you ever expected that this would be your view?

**Loui Ridi** (3:15)
Absolutely not.

**Rachel Abrams** (3:18)
This is actually Loui's second home. He normally lives in Ohio, where he emigrated to in 2004
The Kustra is where Loui grew up and never used to be like this.

**Loui Ridi** (3:31)
Back in the days, we did not have no issues with the settlers. They were not as aggressive as happening right now.
We did have a settlement next to our village. I remember that settlement when I was a kid, but we always told that's going to be temporarily, and there is going to be a peace agreement and they will leave. Soon, none of them will be here. So just never dealt with any of them, never interact with any. Just drive in and pass them, that's it.

**Rachel Abrams** (4:14)
Given that this was a quiet period, Loui, what was it like to grow up in Kusra, the town of Kusra?

**Loui Ridi** (4:21)
Our town is really a good special town. It's about 850 meters above sea level. So you can be on the mountain and looking down, you see the entire village.
The weather here is beautiful. No matter how hot it is, you always have a breeze coming directly from the sea. Most of the people was farmers. So, there's a lot of olive trees, figs and grapes and peaches.
And my family, we are nine brothers and one sister.

**Rachel Abrams** (5:05)
Oh, wow.

**Loui Ridi** (5:06)
My dad, he used to have a junkyard with cars and auto parts. And my mom staying at home, we always gave her hard time dealing with nine brothers when we were kids.

**Rachel Abrams** (5:20)
It always really outnumbered her.

**Loui Ridi** (5:22)
Yes, with only one sister.
One of my favorite memories was school. Once a year, they used to arrange a road trip. It's like a vacation, all-day vacation, to take us to the Dead Sea.

**Rachel Abrams** (5:41)
Oh, yeah.

**Loui Ridi** (5:42)