Kadim is the last of the settlements evacuated in 2005 to reopen. Ganim, Sanur and Homesh have already been formally opened, and families moved in.

But they are a drop in the ocean of the Israeli government's settlement project here. Since it took power in late 2022, it has approved more than 100 new settlements across the West Bank, including 19 in the northern West Bank.

Hagit Ofran, director of the Settlement Watch programme at Peace Now, says the rapid construction in Jenin is part of a wider race by the Israeli government to expand settlements in the West Bank before Israeli elections are held in October. One of those new settlements is Emek Dotan, to the west of Jenin, formally opened last Sunday and now home to almost two dozen Jewish families.

From the small hamlet of Palestinian houses next door to Emek Dotan, teacher Samer Jaber, has watched the settlement take shape: first the bulldozers, then the caravans lifted into place. The problems began even before most of the families moved in, he said."

Groups come and stand opposite our houses, filming us," he told me. " Yesterday they came and stood here, filming me and my children.

Every time my wife stepped outside, they filmed her too. They try to enter our homes.

And they go house by house, shining powerful floodlights directly through all the windows at two or three in the morning." Samer is partially blind and has a leg injury that makes moving difficult."

Fear dominates everything. We are completely defenceless," he said.

" All of them have weapons. I'm bringing concrete blocks to close off this side of the house because I'm afraid for my children."

Samer has watched settlements – and settler attacks – grow in other parts of the West Bank over the past few years, despite international pressure." Europe has no time for us, America is preoccupied with Iran, China has no interest," his analysis began.

"" Democratic systems are over, they're finished," he concluded, anger and bitterness leaking out. " Civilisation, progress and modernity are lies."

Alongside the new settlements around Jenin, two new Israeli military bases are rapidly going up – construction vehicles churning up dust behind high concrete walls topped with watchtowers and barbed wire, Israeli flags flapping in the wind. A military outpost is also being built on seized Palestinian land beside Jenin Refugee Camp – the first Israeli military base to be built on land under full Palestinian Authority control since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.

Israel's military evacuated thousands of residents from Jenin Refugee camp before occupying it in 2025. The Palestinian Authority Governor for Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told me he was worried that Israel's seizure of land around the refugee camp signalled a plan to house settlers there, right in the heart of a Palestinian city, dividing it up like Hebron or Jerusalem.

He described the past two decades without settlers around Jenin as "bliss"." Now, we live in the hell orchestrated by them and their assaults," he said.

" It limits our movement. They cut off roads, bulldoze lands and cut down trees."

The speed of change here is breathtaking. A few weeks ago, I sat drinking coffee in a café on the road that runs from Kadim through the northern West Bank to Israel: now that café – and dozens of Palestinian shops and businesses around it – are just piles of rubble along the road; demolished by the Israeli army.

The countdown to Israeli elections in October marked in the number of Palestinian buildings demolished, the number of new settler caravans.

Hayoun, a plumber, has said he beat and pinned down the co-pilot after breaking into the cockpit and then brought the aircraft under control.