Israeli settlers move outside a Palestinian-Bedouin house on the outskirts of the West Bank town of Taybeh in September.Leo Correa/The Associated Press
Dean Dettloff is the research and advocacy officer for Development and Peace – Caritas Canada.
In the late evening of June 9, residents of Taybeh, a small village in the West Bank, were startled by a fire making its way toward a fuel station. Villagers mobilized to put it out, but as they did so, they found themselves surrounded by Israeli settlers who escalated the alarming situation into a violent one.
The chaotic scene was eventually resolved by Palestinian firefighters and the Israeli police. For Taybeh, however, the event became one more example of an increasingly normalized pattern of intimidation – so normalized, in fact, that two months later, the Israeli military had to close access to the village for Israelis. Yet settlers continue to harass residents, undeterred.
Threats and violence in Taybeh are not new. In July, 2025, priests from each of Taybeh’s three major churches – Greek Orthodox, Latin, and Melkite Greek Catholic – issued a joint letter denouncing settler violence, including another fire that threatened a 5th-century cemetery, which they called “one of the oldest religious landmarks in Palestine.”
Israel sends troops into West Bank homes after settlers besiege Palestinian families
Traditionally understood to be the village of Ephraim to which Jesus withdrew with his disciples after a plot to kill him (John 11:54), Taybeh carries a unique significance. It is the last remaining Palestinian community made up entirely of Christians, and they have lived there for millennia; the population understands itself as the descendants of the first followers of Jesus.
In their letter, the priests noted that Taybeh, like many places throughout the West Bank, had become a foothold for Israeli settlers, who have damaged olive trees and occupied fertile land in an apparent attempt to drive Palestinians out of their homes.
Taybeh is a unique place. Yet as Palestinian Christians so often remind the outside world, their identity is neither a shield that protects them from Israeli violence nor a wedge between their struggle and the struggle of all Palestinians for a safe, free and dignified life. Whether as Palestinians living in territories illegally occupied by forces that are deliberately attempting to replace them, as Palestinians desperate for food and medicine and internally displaced by bombs and bullets in Gaza, or as legally second-class citizens in the State of Israel or Jerusalem, Palestinian Christians share the fate of all Palestinians.
With no recourse to local avenues of justice, the people of Taybeh have turned to the international community, especially fellow Christians, to help make their situation more visible and to urge other governments to meaningfully apply pressure to Israel.
Canada broadens sanctions against ‘facilitators’ of West Bank settler violence
To its credit, the government of Canada has clearly and repeatedly stated its opposition to illegal Israeli settlement on Palestinian land. By coincidence, on the same day as the harassment of Taybeh in June, Canada joined Australia, France, Norway and Britain in issuing new sanctions on two individuals and five entities related to what it calls “extremist settlers.” The sanctions round out a total of 19 individuals and 12 entities who have been sanctioned by Canada under a special category for extremist settlers since 2024.
Canada has also begun revoking the charitable status of organizations credibly linked to funding Israeli settlements. On Sept. 8, Canada, Britain and France banned trade related to settlements in the occupied West Bank. Canada has made it rhetorically clear that Israel’s support for illegal settlements is unacceptable.
But Canada can do more. These efforts, while welcome and expanding, lack the strength necessary to create any material motivation for the Israeli government to discontinue its support for violent settlement on Palestinian land. To be credible, Canada’s opposition would need more concrete outcomes.
To take only a few examples, civil society organizations have long called for a full two-way arms embargo between Canada and Israel, including stopping the routing of military supplies through the U.S.; for transparent trade regulations that make profiting from illegal settlements and violence impossible; and for more forceful pressure on Israel to allow unrestricted access to journalists and to humanitarian relief, which Canada has funded with public money.
These efforts would also not measure up to a full support for Palestinian self-determination, but they would go much further than Canada’s current response.
“Our message is simple and clear: We want to live in peace,” said Father Bashar Fawadleh, the pastor of a Latin Catholic Church in Taybeh, after the fire in June. “We want our children to grow up in safety and our families to enjoy a normal life, just like people everywhere else in the world. This is a basic human right that must be respected and protected.”
It is time for Canada to respond accordingly, for Taybeh and for all Palestinians.