Jordan Valley, Occupied West Financial institution – Haitham al-Zayed, 24, says his fondest recollections as a toddler had been spent swimming in al-Auja’s lush swimming pools. “You’d all the time discover somebody there throughout sizzling days. Everybody went there to chill down,” he stated.
Three months after he and his household had been forcibly displaced by Jewish settlers from Shallal al-Auja – positioned beside the stream coming down from al-Auja spring within the southern occupied West Financial institution – he was horrified, however unsurprised, when hundreds of settlers converged on the spring through the Jewish pageant of Passover firstly of this month.
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In a single video circulating on settler discussion groups, settler youngsters waded and splashed in the identical pure swimming pools the place Haitham had as soon as swam. Their dad and mom barbecued close by, talking to the digicam with elation. “Glad vacation! Take a look at this marvel,” one man introduced. “After years that Jews couldn’t come right here, the individuals of Israel returned to their land.”
The video then targeted on who made this attainable: The so-called hilltop youth, the networks of younger settlers finishing up systematic violence in opposition to Palestinians, driving out dozens of communities throughout the West Financial institution since 2023. “Have you learnt because of whom this glorious factor occurred?” one man stated. “Thanks to some youth – 16 years previous! Which might be going round this space with their flocks. I noticed them stubbornly redeeming the land for us.”
For Haitham, watching the video from the world his household has been displaced to – a patch of desert, mountainous terrain in an space known as Jabal al-Birka, roughly 5km (3 miles) from Shallal al-Auja and inside direct sightline of it – the footage was “very arduous to see”, if unsurprising. Within the background of the celebrations, he might make out the stays of buildings broken or burned within the months of escalating violence that preceded their displacement. “It’s not only one incident,” he stated. “It’s all systematic. It’s tied to the growth of annexation within the West Financial institution.”
In accordance with the United Nations’ Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 1,727 Palestinians from 36 communities within the West Financial institution had been displaced within the first three months of 2026 alone, resulting from settler violence and entry restrictions – already exceeding the very best annual determine recorded in any of the earlier three years.
Allegra Pacheco, chief of celebration of the West Financial institution Safety Consortium – a strategic partnership of a number of worldwide organisations and practically a dozen European Union donor nations working to forestall the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Space C – stated the video was greater than provocation. It was probably proof of the celebration of the intentional use of violence by Israeli settlers to forcibly displace Palestinians – a severe violation of worldwide legislation. “The praising of ethnic cleaning carried out by these settler youth,” stated Pacheco, “it’s actually exhibiting each the impunity and the shortage of accountability we’re seeing proper now.”
‘Preventing for our survival’
The displacement Haitham described didn’t occur in a single day. For years, settlers had performed what he known as “provocative excursions” round his neighborhood.
Then, after Israel’s genocidal battle on Gaza and the accompanying intensification of raids on the West Financial institution began in October 2023, entry to al-Auja spring and its canals was lower off by settlers, severing the Palestinian neighborhood’s essential water supply and summer time gathering spots.
Armed settlers on all-terrain automobiles (ATVs) – funded by the Israeli authorities and offered to settler outposts, that are unauthorised and technically unlawful underneath each Israeli and worldwide legislation – chased livestock and kids. Israeli troopers – and sometimes settlers in army fatigues – raided properties to interrogate or detain residents on the idea of settler claims. “Simply from my household – me and my father – about 400 sheep had been stolen,” Haitham stated.
By January of this yr, the households of Shallal al-Auja and the adjoining neighborhood of Ras Ein al-Auja – primary targets of settler violence for months – concluded they’d no choice but to leave. Haitham’s household was amongst them.
Nowadays, he thinks so much in regards to the buddies he grew up with, eager for the soccer pitch the place they performed each night, and the funerals and weddings that certain their Bedouin neighborhood collectively.
The previous neighborhood now finds itself dispersed throughout the West Financial institution, with help from worldwide organisations more likely to finish quickly, and a scarcity of electrical energy and different infrastructure.
“We’re simply preventing for survival, and all that pleasure of being all collectively has now dissipated into simply us attempting to reside to the subsequent day,” Haitham says.
New plan: ‘It’s all ours’
Passover introduced a rash of movies from throughout the West Financial institution of settlers picnicking, mountaineering and praying in areas Palestinians had not too long ago been pushed from.
It was, Pacheco defined, an organised effort. “For the holiday, they’ve arrange these ‘get to know the Holy Land’ hikes,” she stated, including that settlers had “deliberately picked” areas within the West Financial institution underneath partial or whole Palestinian administrative management (known as Areas B and A, respectively), a deliberate push past Space C, which is underneath the complete management of Israel.
It mirrored, Pacheco stated, a hardening of settler ideology. “The settlers have stated it – the plan is to empty out C, push [Palestinians] into B, push them into A. Now, they’ve a brand new one: It’s all ours.”
In settler discussion groups, one slogan has gained foreign money: “Marching in direction of the expulsion of the enemy.”
That march pushed ahead in current months in Hammam al-Maleh, a once-touristic space within the northern Jordan Valley that includes sizzling springs and Mamluk-era stays. With settler shepherds using the identical violent playbook as elsewhere, the Palestinian shepherding neighborhood was pushed to a near-wholesale evacuation prior to now month.
In movies unfold throughout Passover, what gave the impression to be tons of of settlers gathered for music and prayers simply exterior Hammam al-Maleh’s deserted faculty, which had not way back served greater than 100 college students from the encompassing space.
Muhammad – who requested that his full identify not be used, fearing retribution from Israeli authorities – is the final everlasting resident of Hammam al-Maleh, refusing to go away. The displaced households watching the Passover video from wherever they’d scattered, he stated, “had been extraordinarily damage – not solely the kids, but additionally their dad and mom, as a result of they noticed their properties within the background. They noticed the land they had been kicked out of.”
‘It’s not going to finish right here’
The sample of violence that Muhammad describes in Hammam al-Maleh mirrors intently what Haitham describes occurred within the al-Auja space: Livestock invasions round individuals’s properties, assaults on property, intimidation of ladies and kids, with the Israeli army typically coming to assist settlers fairly than Palestinian residents underneath assault, and sometimes the detention and arrest of the Palestinians.
However the northern Jordan Valley has been the placement of among the most brutal settler assaults recently, together with the reported sexual assault of a father in entrance of his tied-up youngsters in Khirbet Hamsa al-Fawqa, and the brutal beating of an aged man in Tayasir. “The settlers don’t have any mercy,” defined Muhammad. “[These settlers] don’t wish to solely assault able-bodied males. They particularly go after those they know can’t defend themselves. So they aim the kids and the aged.
“They don’t need the land. It’s simply: How will we kick Palestinians out?”
On March 8, Gilad Shriki, commander of the Israeli forces’ Jordan Valley Brigade, got here and warned Hammam al-Maleh and a number of other different communities within the space to go away, declaring that “Space C will quickly be cleared of Palestinians,” based on Palestinian activists within the Jordan Valley.
Haitham’s new residence within the southern Jordan Valley now homes about 120 households from a number of communities that got here there after fleeing settler violence. Situated in Space A and on land owned by the Islamic Waqf, they’d hoped they might be secure. However “the identical those that used to harass us have simply appeared in the identical space once more,” he stated. “They’re doing the identical provocations [land invasions]. They’re chasing the kids with the ATVs.”
Fearing for his or her security, Muhammad moved his spouse and 4 young children – together with a nine-year-old daughter who’s disabled and unable to talk – from Hammam al-Maleh to Tayasir, which is in Space B. However “the identical settlers that attacked us in Hammam al-Maleh are actually chasing them there,” he stated.
“There’s a steady sample of chasing Palestinians, even when they go away – to displace them once more,” stated Muhammad. “That’s a part of why I’m not prepared to maneuver – I do know it’s not going to finish right here.”
With greater than 5,600 individuals displaced since 2023, based on OCHA’s newest figures, the disaster has stretched far past the West Financial institution Safety Consortium’s authentic Space C mandate. “And now, we’re witnessing probably the most worrisome escalation of their violence – armed settlers repeatedly capturing and killing Palestinians,” stated Pacheco.
On April 8, settlers shot and killed Alaa Sobeih inside his greenhouse in Tayasir – the place Muhammad’s household and plenty of others from Hammam al-Maleh had fled.
Pacheco referred to the UN’s early warning indicators for mass atrocities. “This type of incitement, this tolerance of violence in opposition to a definite ethnic group by non-state actors with no accountability, and now public celebrations of the act – it’s extraordinarily disturbing,” she stated. “It’s not simply worrisome by what they’re saying, however what this might probably result in very quickly.”
Refusing to go away
Although his neighbours’ properties in Hammam al-Maleh have been dismantled, Muhammad is refusing to go away. “If I’m not round, then they probably received,” he stated. “In the event that they go to my home and I’m not there, they might publish celebration pictures.” Regardless of the isolation and the violence, Muhammad stays in Hammam al-Maleh partly for “that satisfaction of proving [to them] that this land is ours”.
When he left for 3 days throughout Eid to go to his household, settlers stripped the neighborhood of turbines, electrical cables and photo voltaic panels, leaving them with out dependable electrical energy.
He returned anyway.
With none sheep to graze, he patrols the neighborhood every day. The settlers know he’s there, and he makes positive of it.
Muhammad, refusing to go away in any respect, put it merely: “I used to be born right here. I used to be raised right here. I’m not prepared to go away. Even when I die right here – I’ll die completely happy, as a result of I stayed on my land.”
