Families flee Bedouin village after settler harassment, residents say
Over two dozen families from the Palestinian Bedouin village of Ras Ein el-Auja in the central West Bank have packed up and fled their homes in recent days, residents said, describing harassment by Jewish settlers living in unauthorized outposts nearby. The residents said the harassment has become increasingly difficult to withstand.
The village, Ras Ein el-Auja, was originally home to some 700 people from more than 100 families that had lived there for decades. Residents said 26 families had already left on Thursday, scattering across the territory in search of safer ground, and that several other families were packing up and leaving on Sunday.
Residents describe repeated intrusions and disruption of daily life
Nayef Zayed, a resident, said the settlers come into the village frequently and enter homes, quoting his account as neighbors took down sheep pens and tin structures. “We have been suffering greatly from the settlers. Every day, they come on foot, or on tractors, or on horseback with their sheep into our homes. They enter people’s homes daily,” Zayed said.
Residents also described how sheep and laundry went missing. They said international activists had to begin escorting children to school to keep them safe, and they cited night-time movement by settlers as an ongoing feature of daily life.
B’Tselem says violence has emptied other nearby hamlets
Sarit Michaeli, international director at B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group helping the residents, said some Palestinians pledged to stay put “for the time being.” She said that makes them some of the last Palestinians left in the area.
Michaeli said mounting settler violence has already emptied neighboring Palestinian hamlets in the dusty corridor of land stretching from Ramallah in the West to Jericho, along the Jordanian border, in the east.
Rights group links displacement to an outpost installed in December
Michaeli and Sam Stein, an activist who has been living in the village for about a month, said the turning point came in December, when settlers put up an outpost about 50 meters from Palestinian homes on the northwestern flank of the village. They said settlers strolled through the village at night, and Michaeli described seeing settlers walking around after dark, going into homes to film women and children and tampering with the village’s electricity.
Eyad Isaac, another resident, said the harassment included displacement and intimidation. “The settlers attack us day and night, they have displaced us, they harass us in every way” Isaac said. “They intimidate the children and women.”
Calls for police help often go unanswered
Residents said they called the police frequently to ask for help, but that it seldom arrived. The article said Israel’s military and the local settler governing body did not respond to requests for comment.
The reporting said settlement expansion has been promoted by successive Israeli governments for nearly six decades and that Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has placed settler leaders in senior positions and made settlement expansion a top priority.
UN warns changes could entrench Israeli presence
The article said the growth of settlements has been accompanied by a spike in settler violence, much of it carried out by residents of unauthorized outposts. Palestinians and anti-settlement activists said those outposts often begin with small farms or shepherding used to seize land, and United Nations officials warn the trend is changing the map of the West Bank and entrenching Israeli presence.
Where families went after leaving Ras Ein el-Auja
Displaced families of the village dispersed between other villages near Jericho and near Hebron further south, residents said. Some sold their sheep and tried to move into cities, while others began dismantling their structures without knowing where to go.
Zayed said the departures left residents with no clear path forward. “Where will we go? There’s nowhere. We’re scattered,” he said. “People’s situation is bad. Very bad.”