The Vulnerable People Project Condemns the Assault on AFP Journalists and Peace Activists in Jannatah and the Use of a “Closed Military Zone” Order to Clear Away Witnesses Rather Than the Settlers Who Attacked Them
NEWS PROVIDED BY
The Vulnerable People Project (VPP)
Aug. 26, 2026
JANNATAH, WEST BANK, Aug. 26, 2026 /Standard Newswire/ — A group of masked Israeli settlers, some armed, attacked Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, local landowners, and international journalists in the village of Jannatah, south of Bethlehem — and when Israeli soldiers arrived, they declared the site a “closed military zone” and forced the victims and the press to leave while the attackers were allowed to walk away without a single arrest. The Vulnerable People Project (VPP) strongly condemns the assault and the military’s response, which converted a violent attack on civilians into an operation to remove the witnesses to it.
The activists — some 100 Israelis and Palestinians from several rights groups — had gathered peacefully to stand with Palestinian landowners facing displacement near the Kochav Yehuda outpost, an unauthorized settlement built on privately owned Palestinian land that Israeli authorities have dismantled dozens of times, only for settlers to rebuild it, in some cases within hours. Israeli authorities had demolished the outpost again just two days earlier, and the activists had come to help build a fence around Palestinian homes on the edge of the village that have come under repeated settler attack. It was there that the settlers descended on them.
According to the journalists, medics, and rights groups present, masked settlers beat activists with wooden clubs and sticks, sprayed pepper spray into their faces, hurled stones, and fired live rounds into the air, with one gunman filmed pointing a firearm toward the nonviolent crowd. A three-person team from the international news agency AFP, on the scene to report on the solidarity visit, was assaulted: one AFP journalist was struck in the chin with a stick and left bleeding, and the team’s two vehicles were found with smashed windows and slashed tires. The Palestine Red Crescent said at least five people were treated for injuries. Witnesses reported that many of the settlers involved were children.
When Israeli soldiers reached the scene, they took no action against the armed attackers. Instead, they declared the area a closed military zone and ordered the activists, paramedics, and news crews to leave under threat of arrest — after which, according to AFP, additional settlers arrived and continued throwing stones. The Israeli military said its troops had worked to break up the altercation but did not explain why none of the assailants were detained.
“Masked men fired live rounds and beat reporters bloody in front of soldiers, and it was the reporters who were ordered to leave,” said Jason Jones, founder of the Vulnerable People Project. “Think about what that sequence tells you. The army did not fail to act — it acted precisely, against the wrong people. When the state clears away the journalists, the medics, and the peaceful witnesses and leaves the armed attackers in place, it is not keeping the peace; it is clearing the ground. We have warned before that in the West Bank the witness has become the target, because violence needs darkness to finish its work. Jannatah is that warning caught on camera.”
The pattern on display in Jannatah, VPP warns, now recurs across the occupied West Bank: soldiers who decline to stop or arrest settlers attacking civilians, and “closed military zone” declarations wielded not against the perpetrators of violence but against the press and the peace activists documenting it — a tactic that clears independent eyes from the scene and leaves Palestinian landowners defenseless against the seizure of their land. Settler violence has surged to near-daily attacks in recent months while prosecutions remain vanishingly rare.
The Vulnerable People Project calls on Israeli authorities to arrest and prosecute the settlers responsible for the assault in Jannatah, to cease using closed-military-zone orders to expel journalists and observers from the scenes of settler violence, and to protect the Palestinian landowners and the civilians standing with them. VPP further calls on the international community, press-freedom organizations, and diplomatic missions to demand accountability for the attack on AFP’s journalists and for the broader campaign to strip West Bank communities of the witnesses who are, too often, all that stands between them and the outposts closing in around them.
For more information about the Vulnerable People Project and its mission, please visit SaveWestBankChristians.com.
PRESS CONTACT: Madison Eviston, +1 (210) 897-6809
ABOUT JASON JONES & THE VULNERABLE PEOPLE PROJECT:
Jason Jones is a film producer, author, activist, and human rights worker. He is president of Movie to Movement, the Human Rights Education Organization (H.E.R.O.) and founder of the Vulnerable People Project. The Vulnerable People Project advocates for persecuted communities around the world, with a focus on exposing human rights abuses and supporting vulnerable individuals regardless of faith or background.
SOURCE The Vulnerable People Project