Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)
Colourful kites fly high above Burin, a village in the West Bank. Kids run across a warm hillside as they watch their kites.
Behind them, houses with red roofs in Har Bracha, an Israeli settlement, look down at the village below. The settlement was set up in 1983. It is not allowed by international law and is one of several that surround Burin.
Every summer since 2009, residents have gathered for a kite festival, held on land they say has been partly lost after being confiscated by settlers. As early as 2008, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had warned of settler attacks in the area.
Since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, the United Nations has reported a sharp increase in violence attributed to Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Several Israeli ministers have continued to call for the annexation of all or part of the territory.
