Ras Ein al-Auja, occupied West Financial institution – When the music stops, Naif Ghawanmeh, 45, takes a seat in entrance of the fireplace. The evening is chilly, and for the primary time in weeks, all the things remains 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 offered off by villagers underneath strain. Their water has been minimize off – the Ras Ein spring declared off-limits by the neighbouring settlers for the previous 12 months.
And for the previous two weeks, a lot of the group’s properties have been dismantled. Lots 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 tough feeling,” Ghawanmeh says. He’s confused, fidgeting by the fireplace and at instances rubbing his face in distress and exhaustion. ”Everybody left. Not certainly one of 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.
Aside from the 14 Ghawanmeh households, together with a lot of youngsters, who say they’ve nowhere else to go, the remaining are packing up and leaving within the coming days.
This speedy displacement of tons of of individuals marks the most important expulsion from a single Bedouin group because of Israeli settler violence in trendy instances – 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 12 months, 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 frequent for rural Palestinian communities throughout the West Financial institution.
Settlers have been enabled by speedy development within the variety of settlement outposts bobbing up throughout the West Financial institution. Settlements and these outposts are unlawful underneath worldwide legislation. They’re additionally constructed with out the authorized permission of Israeli authorities however in observe are largely tolerated and supplied safety by Israeli forces, particularly lately underneath the far-right authorities of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Worldwide legislation 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 practically 50 p.c since 2022 – from 141 to 210 now.
This current explosion of settler outposts has given method 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 sometimes run by a single armed Israeli settler supported by a number of armed youngsters typically funnelled in by government-funded programmes supposed 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 p.c of the West Financial institution, in keeping with the Israeli NGO Kerem Navot. That determine has elevated since then by a minimum of tens of 1000’s of dunums (1 dunum equals 0.1 hectares and 1 / 4 of an acre), in keeping with 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 at all times 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 essential sources that Bedouin Palestinians depend on for themselves. Like most different Palestinian communities within the West Financial institution’s Space C, which Israel absolutely 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, hardly ever grants permits for Palestinians to construct infrastructure, together with connecting to the grid or putting in photo voltaic vitality methods. The photo voltaic panels the villagers have put up have continuously been destroyed by settlers.
As well as, these Palestinian shepherding communities, typically situated in dry areas, are actually denied enough entry to water, together with from the luxurious 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 in the beginning of Israel’s genocidal battle within the Gaza Strip by Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the near-total impunity they get pleasure from after they perform assaults. Whereas court rulings in favour of Palestinians and in opposition to settlers have occurred, they’re uncommon.
Based on 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 file of settler assaults by greater than 350. A complete of 240 Palestinians within the West Financial institution, together with 55 youngsters, have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in 2025.
These unprecedented ranges of settler and soldier violence alongside the wholesale deprivation of fundamental sources that rural Palestinians have to survive have led to the erasure of dozens of rural Palestinian communities.
In January and February 2025, the Israeli army forcibly displaced about 40,000 individuals from refugee camps in Tulkarem and Jenin, in keeping with the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Because the Gaza battle started in October 2023, settler violence has pressured out 44 Palestinian communities within the West Financial institution consisting of two,701 individuals, practically half of whom are minors. 13 extra communities comprising 452 individuals have been partially transferred. These individuals find yourself wherever they’ll 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 strain’
For 27 months, Ras Ein al-Auja has been subjected to all of all these assaults and restrictions. Previously 12 months, a number of Israeli shepherding outposts have sprung up at completely 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 strain at evening,” remarks an exhausted Ghawanmeh, who explains the haphazard shifts the lads of his village have been taking to maintain watch. “Should you sleep, the settlers will burn your home.”
Underneath the strain 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 grow to be 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 understanding from each settler threats and accounts from displaced kinfolk elsewhere that settlers would seemingly observe them anyway – the individuals of Ras Ein al-Auja had held on by a thread.
That’s, till the most recent 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 immediately subsequent to individuals’s properties originally of the 12 months – proper in the midst of the group.
“Life has fully stopped ever since,” Ghawanmeh says. Households have barricaded themselves inside their homes, frightened of the settlers who now routinely graze their flocks simply outdoors Palestinian properties.
Then, the spate of assaults this month compelled much more households to flee and take their remaining sheep with them. Virtually three-quarters of the group has now gone. These households are actually scattered throughout the West Financial institution though most are actually within the cramped cities and cities of Space A, which makes up 18 p.c of the West Financial institution and is run by the Palestinian Authority.
In consequence, 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 might be from it, and it’s from you.”
“To go away your home and depart your village”, he provides, “it is extremely, very, very tough. However we’re pressured to.”
The kids who stay have been left rudderless and afraid at evening as they take a look at empty, scarred patches of land the place as soon as their family and friends lived. “Youngsters are scared, scared that the settlers, the [settler security guards], will come,” Ghawanmeh says.
Al Jazeera requested remark from the Israeli army in regards to the accusations made on this article and to ask for particulars about what motion is being taken to forestall settler assaults on Palestinian communities, together with Ras Ein al-Auja. We acquired no response.
‘Even in case you sing for me till tomorrow, I gained’t be blissful’
Because the swell of violence and land thefts offers method to a gentle exodus of the final remaining villagers, a few musicians come to supply 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 blissful for a minimum of just a few moments and that they’ll really feel like youngsters, even when it’s only for a couple of minutes,” says Kai Jack, a Norwegian solidarity activist {and professional} contrabass participant.
A couple of dozen youngsters huddle in plastic chairs in a tin shack that after served because the assembly place for the group’s many households to listen to this uncommon efficiency. As they take heed to a handful of Palestinian folks songs, the youngsters, at first timid, calm down and start to clap and sing to staples like Wein a Ramallah (The place? To Ramallah).
For the primary time in weeks, the youngsters even handle to crack just a few 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 kids’s moms, wanting on from the sidelines, start to softly sing alongside:
“My life will proceed by way of sacrifice – for freedom.”
Because the track ends, the moms be part of the youngsters in rounds of applause. “Lovely?” Jack asks.
“Very,” replies one of many moms who explains how she helps her youngster fall to sleep with this very track. “And it has been so lengthy since they have been in a position to [sleep well].”
Because the efficiency ends and the youngsters crowd round Jack’s huge bass, just a few of the remaining Ghawanmeh brothers retreat outdoors, their minds unable to relaxation as they ponder their inevitable expulsion.
“These songs are for the youngsters,” Naif Ghawanmeh says. “We’re drained inside. Very drained.”
One among his small nephews, Ahmed, simply 2 years previous, begins to sing the refrain of Wein a Ramallah. For one transient second, the environment is nearly festive. However whereas he’s blissful the youngsters are stress-free, Ghawanmeh shrugs it off himself.
“By God, take a look at me,” he says over the fireplace, which is burning no matter provides they didn’t wish to depart for the settlers to take. “Even in case you sing for me till tomorrow, I gained’t be blissful. 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.”
