06-07-2025
Palestinians left 'without shelter and water' as settlers empty West Bank village
On Thursday evening, Israeli settlers erected a tent just metres away from a Palestinian Bedouin village in the Al-Mu'arrajat area in the occupied West Bank's Jordan Valley.
Al-Mu'arrajat East, which occupies a small patch of land on a rocky hillside, had endured years of escalating attacks from the nearby Israeli Movot Yorihu settlement.
Thirty families had already been forced to abandon their homes. The last 20 had clung on until now, but this would be the village's death knell.
That night, the settlers moved from home to home forcing families out at gun point.
Resident Aliya Mlihat immediately rang the police, who were slow to respond. When border police and three military jeeps arrived on the scene, they did nothing to stop the onslaught, even facilitating the raids on people's homes.
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"Their numbers kept increasing until there were approximately 50 settlers, ranging in age from 18 to 50, all speaking fluent Arabic," she told Middle East Eye.
Mlihat recalled that "the expressions on the soldiers' faces revealed satisfaction - even joy - as if they were endorsing the settlers' actions".
In one photo taken by Mlihat, settlers can be seen lounging in chairs and grinning alongside soldiers in fatigues.
Mlihat tried to document the raid on her phone, but was verbally abused and threatened by the settlers, which included teenage boys, who she said attempted to beat her.
The attack was led by sanctioned Israeli settler Zohar Sabah, who had set up the new outpost. According to Mlihat, Sabah stormed the area armed with an M16 rifle, shouting at residents to "flee to Jordan".
'What is happening cannot be explained as the actions of a few extremist groups - it is part of an official state policy aimed at full control over our land'
- Aliya Mlihat, Al-Mu'arrajat East resident
About an hour into the attack, the settlers were at Mlihat's door.
"They began searching for anything they could take, shouting: 'Leave now!' I responded firmly: 'We will not leave!' But they continued yelling and hurling insults at me, my mother and my siblings," Mlihat recalled.
Mlihat and her family left at gun point, along with the remaining families who dismantled their homes and loaded their belongings onto trucks.
"We had no option but to grab what was left of our memories, dreams, kitchen tools, schoolbooks and my sister's high school exam papers - and go," Mlihat said.
The community are now scattered across different areas including the nearby villages of Al-'Awsaj and Al-Auja.
Mlihat and her family ended up on the outskirts of a refugee camp, "without shelter, without water, without even air to breathe", she said.
"We are exposed to the scorching sun, in temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius," she told MEE.
She said her sister, who is still in school, is in a "very poor mental state", forced to study for her exams in the blistering heat with no access to water.
"She used to be a top student, but she broke down in tears due to everything she has endured. No officials from the Ministry of Education have reached out to her," Mlihat said.
Her father, who was struck in the chest during the attack, is having difficulty breathing, while her mother has not stopped crying since the night of the attack.
An impossible choice
Mlihat was born and raised in Al-Mu'arrajat East, where her family had lived for four decades.
She said that since October 2020, the community had seen a steady rise in settler violence, beginning with the theft of their livestock and restrictions on their use of grazing land.
At one point, settlers poisoned their sheep.
But since the onset of Israel's war on Gaza, the violence had escalated, with settlers emboldened by a far-right government determined to consolidate its control over the occupied West Bank.
In October, settlers including Sabah raided the local school armed with clubs, assaulting teachers and students and tying up the principal, who was subsequently hospitalised. Following the raid, they placed dolls splattered with red paint to resemble blood at the school's entrance. The same dolls were again used in a settler attack on 23 January to adorn mock child graves outside the school.
In February, they burned the village mosque to the ground.
UK-sanctioned Israeli settler Zohar Sabah relaxes with soldiers hours before the raid on Al-Mu'arrajat East (Aliya Mlihat)
Mlihat said that the attacks occurred "in an organised manner", with numbers of settlers swelling significantly.
Shaina Low, the Norwegian Refugee Council's Communication Advisor, said the violence may amount to a forcible transfer, prohibited under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a war crime under international law.
"They faced an impossible choice, reaching a breaking point. This is not a voluntary departure," she said.
The attacks on Mu'arrajat are part of a surge of settler violence across the occupied West Bank intended to clear Palestinians off large swathes of Area C - an area which makes up 60 percent of the West Bank and is under Israeli control.
Settlers often act under military protection and are emboldened by the Israeli government, who approved 22 new settlements in May.
"What is happening in terms of attacks and systematic displacement cannot be explained as merely the actions of a few extremist groups - it is, in fact, part of an official state policy aimed at full control over our land," Mlihat said.
Al-Mu'arrajat's forced displacement follows that of the residents of a nearby Bedouin community, Mughayir ad-Deir, in late May.
Israeli rights group Stop the Wall reported that settlers pitched a tent in the middle of the village, hooking it up to running water from a nearby outpost. They then proceeded to expand the outpost, forcing the 125 residents to flee to the industrial zone of Beitunia, where they do not have access to water or electricity.
Sabah was also involved in this campaign, along with another sanctioned settler, Ben Pazi. Both participated in the attack after being placed on the UK sanctions list.
The nearby community of Ras Ein al-Auja, home to 130 residents, is expected to be next after a new settler outpost was established in the centre of the village in June.
"We've seen this pattern, that now the settlers have realised they can duplicate," Low told MEE.
"It involves just a couple of people setting up an outpost, herding their own flocks on the community's traditional grazing land, taking over access to water resources, stealing sheep, intimidating the community and preventing them from having access to all the natural resources around them.
"And then we'll see this escalation of violent attacks, often at night. This is what we're seeing now, just copy-paste, replicated all across the area east of Ramallah."
Low said the impacts on the communities are "devastating", as land and access to water sources is growing scarce in the West Bank, leaving displaced people scant options for relocation and forcing them into debt.
"They're running into so much debt that they're selling their flocks, losing their main source of income," Low said.
Palestinian Bedouins dismantle a house before fleeing, while settler violence surges, near Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, 4 July 2025 (REUTERS/Ammar Awad)
"What we're seeing is the erasure of Palestinian communities in the West Bank - in this case, in Area C - but we're also seeing communities being displaced in parts of Area B, and even settler violence and attacks happening in Area A as well," Low said.
Area A, which covers 21 percent of the West Bank, is under full administrative control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), while Area B constitutes 18 percent and is under partial PA control.
"If the Palestinian communities are removed from these areas, it means that Israel will be able to expand their settlement project, and build settlements connecting the settlements among each other," Low explained.
"It means that the two-state solution that the international community purports to support will no longer be viable, or is not viable if there's no Palestinian presence in large parts of the West Bank."
Low emphasised that despite frequent visits by diplomats to imperilled Palestinian villages in the West Bank, the international community is doing little to prevent their displacement.
"They visited these communities. They've spoken out against the displacement, but they aren't doing enough to prevent the displacement from happening in the first place," she said.
