Ras Ein al-Auja, occupied West Financial institution – When the music stops, Naif Ghawanmeh, 45, takes a seat in entrance of the hearth. The evening is chilly, and for the primary time in weeks, every little thing continues to be for a second – the Israeli settlers’ celebrations have completed for the day.
However the village of Ras Ein al-Auja, located within the jap West Financial institution’s Jericho governorate, has been all however worn out.
The village was one of many final Palestinian herding communities on this a part of the Jordan Valley, however now, the herders’ sheep have gone – most of them stolen or poisoned by settlers or bought off by villagers beneath stress. Their water has been lower off – the Ras Ein spring declared off-limits by the neighbouring settlers for the previous 12 months.
And for the previous two weeks, many of the group’s properties have been dismantled. Most of the households pressured out have burned their furnishings earlier than they’ve left, not wanting to depart it for the invading settlers to make use of.
“By God, it’s a troublesome feeling,” Ghawanmeh says. He’s perplexed, fidgeting by the hearth and at occasions rubbing his face in distress and exhaustion. ”Everybody left. Not one among them [remains]. All of them left.”
Because the begin of this 12 months, about 450 of the 650 Palestinian inhabitants of Ras Ein al-Auja have fled their properties – for a lot of the one place they’ve ever lived – due to violence by Israeli settlers.
Apart from the 14 Ghawanmeh households, together with numerous kids, who say they’ve nowhere else to go, the remaining are packing up and leaving within the coming days.
This fast displacement of lots of of individuals marks the most important expulsion from a single Bedouin group on account of Israeli settler violence in fashionable occasions – a feat that has elicited taunting celebrations by the encroaching settlers and left lives in ruins for Bedouin households now disadvantaged of shelter, livelihoods and group.
No land, no sheep, no water, no security
Till the New Yr, the individuals of Ras Ein al-Auja had held out on their lands regardless of an onslaught of bodily assaults, thefts, threats, motion restrictions and destruction of property by settlers – a state of being that’s now all too widespread for rural Palestinian communities throughout the West Financial institution.
Settlers have been enabled by fast progress within the variety of settlement outposts arising throughout the West Financial institution. Settlements and these outposts are unlawful beneath worldwide regulation. They’re additionally constructed with out the authorized permission of Israeli authorities however in follow are largely tolerated and provided safety by Israeli forces, particularly in recent times beneath the far-right authorities of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Worldwide regulation stipulates that occupying powers like Israel should not transfer their very own civilian populations into occupied territories, such because the West Financial institution, the place about 700,000 settlers now reside.
In December, one other 19 settler outposts constructed with out authorities approval have been retroactively approved by Israel’s authorities as official settlements. In all, the variety of settlements and outposts within the West Financial institution and occupied East Jerusalem has risen by almost 50 % since 2022 – from 141 to 210 now.
This current explosion of settler outposts has given solution to a more moderen but much more harmful phenomenon: shepherding outposts.
Every of those outposts mimics the Bedouins’ lifestyle however with settlers’ personal grazing flocks. They’re usually run by a single armed Israeli settler supported by a number of armed youngsters typically funnelled in by government-funded programmes meant to assist “at-risk” troubled youth.
Utilizing animal grazing as a method to overrun Palestinian shepherds and seize their lands, such settlers had managed by April 2024 to take over about 14 % of the West Financial institution, in response to the Israeli NGO Kerem Navot. That determine has elevated since then by at the very least tens of hundreds of dunums (1 dunum equals 0.1 hectares and 1 / 4 of an acre), in response to Kerem Navot’s founder, Dror Etkes.
The outposts function a launching pad for assaults, controls on Palestinian motion and army-coordinated arrests, which have unfolded in locations like Ras Ein al-Auja.
Routinely, settlers steal and poison the livestock that Palestinian shepherds, who largely inhabit these distant areas, depend on for his or her livelihoods. On high of this, settlers are stopping Palestinian shepherds who nonetheless have flocks from accessing the grazing lands they’ve all the time used. Settlers have constructed fences and interact in intimidation and violence, forcing Palestinians to purchase costly animal fodder to maintain their flocks as a substitute.
Settlers additionally goal the fundamental sources that Bedouin Palestinians depend on for themselves. Like most different Palestinian communities within the West Financial institution’s Space C, which Israel totally controls, the individuals of Ras Ein al-Auja are denied entry to electrical energy by Israeli authorities. The Israeli Civil Administration, which controls zoning and planning in Space C, not often grants permits for Palestinians to construct infrastructure, together with connecting to the grid or putting in photo voltaic power techniques. The photo voltaic panels the villagers have put up have continuously been destroyed by settlers.
As well as, these Palestinian shepherding communities, typically positioned in dry areas, at the moment are denied adequate entry to water, together with from the plush springs present in Ras Ein al-Auja which as soon as made this village some of the affluent of the shepherding communities.
“They prevented us from getting water,” Ghawanmeh says. “They prevented us from bringing the sheep to the water and getting water from the spring.”
Close to-total impunity
Israeli settlers have additionally been emboldened by a wide-scale armament programme spearheaded firstly of Israel’s genocidal conflict within the Gaza Strip by Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the near-total impunity they get pleasure from once they perform assaults. Whereas court rulings in favour of Palestinians and towards settlers have occurred, they’re uncommon.
In accordance with the United Nations Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, greater than 1,800 settler assaults – about 5 per day – have been documented in 2025, leading to casualties or property injury in about 280 communities throughout the West Financial institution, and besting the earlier 12 months’s report of settler assaults by greater than 350. A complete of 240 Palestinians within the West Financial institution, together with 55 kids, have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in 2025.
These unprecedented ranges of settler and soldier violence alongside the wholesale deprivation of primary sources that rural Palestinians must survive have led to the erasure of dozens of rural Palestinian communities.
In January and February 2025, the Israeli navy forcibly displaced about 40,000 individuals from refugee camps in Tulkarem and Jenin, in response to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Because the Gaza conflict started in October 2023, settler violence has pressured out 44 Palestinian communities within the West Financial institution consisting of two,701 individuals, almost half of whom are minors. 13 extra communities comprising 452 individuals have been partially transferred. These individuals find yourself wherever they will discover a place to remain, leading to fractured communities and households.
Such figures of displacement haven’t been seen within the West Financial institution in many years.
‘Two years of psychological stress’
For 27 months, Ras Ein al-Auja has been subjected to all of all these assaults and restrictions. Prior to now 12 months, a number of Israeli shepherding outposts have sprung up at totally different corners of the village, which extends for 20,000 dunums (20sq km or 7.7sq miles), and have come more and more nearer to Palestinian properties.
“Two years of psychological stress at evening,” remarks an exhausted Ghawanmeh, who explains the haphazard shifts the boys of his village have been taking to maintain watch. “For those who sleep, the settlers will burn your own home.”
Below the stress of settler assaults, poisonings and thefts, the variety of sheep belonging to the group has dwindled from 24,000 to fewer than 3,000. Settler assaults and invasions have develop into so fixed that 9 solidarity activists – some progressives from Israel and others from different nations – have been required to maintain an around-the-clock protecting presence.
With out wherever else to go – and figuring out from each settler threats and accounts from displaced relations elsewhere that settlers would seemingly comply with them anyway – the individuals of Ras Ein al-Auja had held on by a thread.
That’s, till the newest settler outpost.
Following a sample seen in different now-displaced Bedouin communities like close by Mu’arrajat, a few of whose inhabitants fled to Ras Ein al-Auja, settlers started erecting outposts straight subsequent to individuals’s properties firstly of the 12 months – proper in the course of the group.
“Life has fully stopped ever since,” Ghawanmeh says. Households have barricaded themselves inside their homes, afraid of the settlers who now routinely graze their flocks simply outdoors Palestinian properties.
Then, the spate of assaults this month compelled way more households to flee and take their remaining sheep with them. Nearly three-quarters of the group has now gone. These households at the moment are scattered throughout the West Financial institution though most at the moment are within the cramped cities and cities of Space A, which makes up 18 % of the West Financial institution and is run by the Palestinian Authority.
Consequently, these communities’ centuries-old traditions as Bedouins are coming to an finish.
“There’s a saying among the many Bedouins: ‘Upbringing outweighs origins,’” Ghawanmeh says. “It means you have been raised right here, you eat from the land, you drink from the land, you sleep on the land. You’re from it, and it’s from you.”
“To go away your own home and go away your village”, he provides, “it is extremely, very, very troublesome. However we’re pressured to.”
The youngsters who stay have been left rudderless and afraid at evening as they have a look at empty, scarred patches of land the place as soon as their family and friends lived. “Kids are scared, scared that the settlers, the [settler security guards], will come,” Ghawanmeh says.
Al Jazeera requested remark from the Israeli navy concerning the accusations made on this article and to ask for particulars about what motion is being taken to stop settler assaults on Palestinian communities, together with Ras Ein al-Auja. We acquired no response.
‘Even should you sing for me till tomorrow, I received’t be completely satisfied’
Because the swell of violence and land thefts provides solution to a gradual exodus of the final remaining villagers, a few musicians come to offer some reduction from one other day of traumatic separation and displacement.
“I hope they’ll really feel seen, and I hope they’ll really feel completely satisfied for at the very least a number of moments and that they will really feel like kids, even when it’s only for a couple of minutes,” says Kai Jack, a Norwegian solidarity activist {and professional} contrabass participant.
A few dozen kids huddle in plastic chairs in a tin shack that when served because the assembly place for the group’s many households to listen to this uncommon efficiency. As they hearken to a handful of Palestinian people songs, the kids, at first timid, loosen up and start to clap and sing to staples like Wein a Ramallah (The place? To Ramallah).
For the primary time in weeks, the kids even handle to crack a number of smiles.
After which, Jack and the accompanying violinist, Amalia Kelter Zeitlin, settle into enjoying the Palestinian lullaby Yamma Mawil al-Hawa (Mom, What’s with the Wind?). The youngsters’s moms, wanting on from the sidelines, start to softly sing alongside:
“My life will proceed by way of sacrifice – for freedom.”
Because the music ends, the moms be a part of the kids in rounds of applause. “Lovely?” Jack asks.
“Very,” replies one of many moms who explains how she helps her baby fall to sleep with this very music. “And it has been so lengthy since they have been in a position to [sleep well].”
Because the efficiency ends and the kids crowd round Jack’s monumental bass, a number of of the remaining Ghawanmeh brothers retreat outdoors, their minds unable to relaxation as they ponder their inevitable expulsion.
“These songs are for the kids,” Naif Ghawanmeh says. “We’re drained inside. Very drained.”
One among his small nephews, Ahmed, simply 2 years outdated, begins to sing the refrain of Wein a Ramallah. For one transient second, the ambiance is nearly festive. However whereas he’s completely satisfied the kids are enjoyable, Ghawanmeh shrugs it off himself.
“By God, have a look at me,” he says over the hearth, which is burning no matter provides they didn’t wish to go away for the settlers to take. “Even should you sing for me till tomorrow, I received’t be completely satisfied. You see, I’m drained inside. For 2 years, I’ve been affected by oppression, hardship and issues day and evening from the settlers.
“I’m drained inside.”
