Utolsó frissítés: 2026.06.12. — Szerző: Anti-Propaganda News Blog
Taybeh Junction, Occupied West Bank – Barbed wire installed at the entrance to the Mleihat estate makes it difficult for women, children, the elderly, and visitors to enter.
But 57-year-old Muhammad Mleihat says the wire is mainly intended to slow the settlers down just enough for them to notice them. „They have wire cutters,” he said, pointing to the fence line. „They come over, cut it, and push their way in.”
Mleihat is no stranger to displacement. His family was among those expelled in 1948 during the Nakba (catastrophe), when 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland during the founding of Israel.
Two years ago, she and her children were driven out of Mughayyir al-Deir—a pastoral community in the eastern hills—by settler violence. They arrived at this land, about a kilometer northwest of Taybeh Junction, where, according to her, taboo – that is, an official title deed – in his own name.
Over the past three years, however, as all Palestinian Bedouin villages east and south of the intersection have been forcibly evacuated, the settlers’ zone of confrontation has reached this section along Route 449—areas that are officially under Israeli security and Palestinian civil control. Until recently, these regions, designated as Area B under the Oslo Accords, were considered off-limits to settlers. As the lands abandoned by the Bedouins were cleared, the settlers followed them.
„The settlers came after us—the same settlers from Mughayyir al-Deir,” Mleihat explained.
According to locals, the most aggressive settlers in the area are linked to Neria Ben Pazi’s network. She is a settler who has been sanctioned by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan, among others, and who has been at the forefront of the violent displacement of Palestinians east of Ramallah, including, according to allegations, support for the displacement efforts in Mughayyir al-Deir. Local observers estimate that Ben Pazi has now established a „double-digit” number of outposts in the West Bank.
According to reports from local families, the settlers arrive at night on donkeys and in off-road vehicles, which are provided to settlers living in illegal outposts with state funding. They cut through fences, drive their herds onto cultivated fields, destroy fodder and hay, and cut water and electrical lines.
The „hilltop youth”—as the most ideologically driven segment of the settlers is known—carry wooden or metal clubs with them during their daily raids, occasionally beating and kicking residents. They patrol during the day, driving their flocks through the properties of Palestinian families, and their animals regularly graze in the olive groves next to the Mleihat estate.
Just above the Mleihat estate, a building and a small plot of land stand half-abandoned, having been left by their Palestinian owner. Recently, settlers cut through the fence and brought 20 camels to graze on the land, which is located in the middle of this cluster of Bedouin homes on the south side of Route 449. According to an Israeli activist who has been documenting the area and providing protection to the communities for years, the camels were animals loaned by settlers from one of the illegal outposts in the Jordan Valley. The herds were essentially moved through the West Bank to reinforce the advance of the newest settlers.
„They have evacuated Ein Samiya, al-Mu’arrajat, Mughayyir al-Deir, Mikhmas, and Ras al-Ein al-Aujah,” Mleihat noted. „They want to finish this off, and then they want to move on.”
„We are outside the protection of the law”
Mleihat’s account closely aligns with the findings of a report published this week by Amnesty International, which concluded that Israel is seeking to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank through a deliberate, state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinian Bedouin and pastoralist communities—which amounts to the war crime of unlawful displacement and the crime against humanity of forced displacement.
Citing UN data, the report states that between January 2023 and April 2026, approximately 5,910 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from 117 communities, at least 45 of which were completely depopulated. The Ramallah and al-Bireh governorate, which includes the land where Mleihat now lives, accounted for the highest proportion of those displaced.
Amnesty’s report focuses on Area C—approximately 60 percent of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli control—where the state has the administrative machinery to carry out evictions, including demolition orders, the declaration of „firing zones,” and the reclassification of unregistered land as state land.
On the Mleihat plot—which is located in Zone B, is registered in the private property registry, and has an official title deed—these measures are generally not available. The army cannot easily demolish a legally constructed house on land with a title deed, and the civil administration cannot lawfully evict the owner.
What remains, then, is violence outside the law.
„The only way the state can evict them is through illegal means,” said Yotam, an Israeli activist who has been providing protection to Palestinian communities in the area for years. „And to do that, they use these settler gangs.”
This is why, according to activists and locals, some of the most brutal outposts have recently appeared—including in Tayasir, Beit Imrin, Jililiya, Ein al-Duyuk, al-Mughayyir, Jaloud, and Madama—are actually located in Areas B and A (which are under full Palestinian administrative control), where it was once believed that land titles and the Palestinian civil authority provided protection.
There are two settlement outposts in the Taybeh Junction area. Regarding the most recent one, locals said that Ben Pazi established it, not on the families’ private land, but on a small plot of state-owned land next to a nearby water intake point—a bridgehead that the state does nothing to stop, even though the displacement it causes extends into the surrounding private lands in Zone B.
Jótám said he had seen a photo at the local police station of Ben Pazi’s flocks grazing on the now-deserted lands of Wadi as-Seeq, which had apparently been given to the station as a gift.
Meanwhile, Ben Pazi’s newest outpost has adopted the same aggressively violent tactics he has used at his other outposts, tactics that have previously wiped out so many Palestinian communities. This is largely carried out by a group of teenage settlers tasked with herding the settler flocks and harassing the locals.
On June 1, the Israeli army declared the immediate vicinity of the intersection a closed military zone for one year, restricting civilian access to the area. Although the order theoretically applies to the settlers as well, in practice, according to residents and activists, it was enforced only against solidarity activists who provide protection to the family living in the closed area. The settlers remain at the recently established illegal outpost, next to the permanent military post on the hill. Such unilateral enforcement has been used elsewhere as well, prior to the forcible displacement of Bedouin communities.
Nayef Khalaife, the father of the last family living on the north side of the road, sees no contradiction in any of this. „When the army comes, it doesn’t talk to the settlers. It comes over, stands there, and leaves,” he said. „There is no law. The law does not apply to the settlers. We are outside the protection of the law.”
Al Jazeera contacted the Israeli military and security authorities for comment on the claims made by Palestinian locals and activists in this article, but has not yet received a response.
„There’s no such thing as a lifestyle anymore”
Khalaife and his small family live in a modest house overlooking a plain where the only flock still grazing belongs to the settlers. Day after day, the settlers occupy their land and try to break into their home.
Both Khalaife and Mleihat sold their flocks, which had provided their livelihood for decades. „We sold them because of the settlers—there are no pastures,” said Mleihat. „They fenced it off, and now they’re the ones living there.” His income now, he said, „is nothing—it comes only from God.”.
Families living in local communities have either sold their flocks or are keeping what remains of them hidden, out of reach of the settlers. Meanwhile, the traditional Bedouin pastoral way of life is systematically dying out—as is happening throughout the West Bank today.
Water was another tool of dispossession. Khalaife’s family had been having water delivered from a spring about a kilometer away, but this week „the settlers came and cut it off,” he said. Amid daily break-ins and harassment, Khalaife reported incidents of both major and minor thefts—including one settler who one day pocketed a teacup from the yard and the next day stole a coat from the clothesline. He insists he is no longer afraid of them. „If death comes, so be it,” he said solemnly, as his wife, son, and daughters sat beside him in their home.
The family walked out together. Standing in the courtyard in front of their home, Khalaife, his wife Shoma, and their son and daughters looked down at the plain stretching out below them. Khalaife’s daughter, Ikhlas, pointed to the settler outpost barely 150 meters away, which stood across from the family home. Then she pulled up the photos on her phone.
In the photos taken a few years ago, several houses can be seen on the plain. „Five families lived here in 2020,” he said as he scrolled through the photos. „There were many neighbors nearby—we were happy with them. But by 2024, they had completely disappeared; there was no trace of them left, except for this tree.”
Since the settlers took over the plain, they have demolished nearly all of their neighbors„ homes, leaving only scattered rubble. ”The house where [the settlers] now live used to be a Palestinian house,„ he explained. ”They attacked them, forced them to leave, and settled there themselves.”
„We are sad because they have left us, and we are left all alone.”
A gentle breeze broke the eerie silence of the deserted plain. Ikhlas pointed to a dilapidated structure, with debris scattered on the ground. „Look how they smashed it up, but the tree the family planted next to it is still standing.”
„The tree—it is a witness to the fact that they were here.”
Source: Al Jazeera
