Jordan Valley, Occupied West Bank \u2013<\/strong> Haitham al-Zayed, 24, says his fondest memories as a child were spent swimming in al-Auja\u2019s lush pools. \u201cYou\u2019d always find someone there during hot days. Everyone went there to cool down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Three months after he and his family were forcibly displaced by Jewish settlers from Shallal al-Auja \u2013 located beside the stream coming down from al-Auja spring in the southern occupied West Bank \u2013 he was horrified, but unsurprised, when thousands of settlers converged on the spring during the Jewish festival of Passover at the start of this month.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n In one video circulating on settler chat groups, settler children waded and splashed in the same natural pools where Haitham had once swam. Their parents barbecued nearby, speaking to the camera with elation. \u201cHappy holiday! Look at this wonder,\u201d one man announced. \u201cAfter years that Jews could not come here, the people of Israel returned to their land.\u201d<\/p>\n The video then focused on who made this possible: The so-called hilltop youth, the networks of young settlers carrying out systematic violence against Palestinians, driving out dozens of communities across the West Bank since 2023. \u201cDo you know thanks to whom this wonderful thing happened?\u201d one man said. \u201cThanks to a few youth \u2013 16 years old! That are going around this area with their flocks. I saw them stubbornly redeeming the land for us.\u201d<\/p>\n For Haitham, watching the video from the area his family has been displaced to \u2013 a patch of desert, mountainous terrain in an area called Jabal al-Birka, roughly 5km (3 miles) from Shallal al-Auja and within direct sightline of it \u2013 the footage was \u201cvery hard to see\u201d, if unsurprising. In the background of the celebrations, he could make out the remains of structures damaged or burned in the months of escalating violence that preceded their displacement. \u201cIt\u2019s not just one incident,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s all systematic. It\u2019s tied to the expansion of annexation in the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the United Nations\u2019 Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 1,727 Palestinians from 36 communities in the West Bank were displaced in the first three months of 2026 alone, due to settler violence and access restrictions \u2013 already exceeding the highest annual figure recorded in any of the previous three years.<\/p>\n Allegra Pacheco, chief of party of the West Bank Protection Consortium \u2013 a strategic partnership of several international organisations and nearly a dozen European Union donor countries working to prevent the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Area C \u2013 said the video was more than provocation. It was potentially evidence of the celebration of the intentional use of violence by Israeli settlers to forcibly displace Palestinians \u2013 a serious violation of international law. \u201cThe praising of ethnic cleansing carried out by these settler youth,\u201d said Pacheco, \u201cit\u2019s really showing both the impunity and the lack of accountability we are seeing right now.\u201d<\/p>\n The displacement Haitham described did not happen overnight. For years, settlers had conducted what he called \u201cprovocative tours\u201d around his community.<\/p>\n Then, after Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza and the accompanying intensification of raids on the West Bank started in October 2023, access to al-Auja spring and its canals was cut off by settlers, severing the Palestinian community\u2019s main water source and summer gathering spots.<\/p>\n Armed settlers on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) \u2013 funded by the Israeli government and provided to settler outposts, which are unauthorised and technically illegal under both Israeli and international law \u2013 chased livestock and children. Israeli soldiers \u2013 and often settlers in military fatigues \u2013 raided homes to interrogate or detain residents on the basis of settler claims. \u201cJust from my family \u2013 me and my father \u2013 about 400 sheep were stolen,\u201d Haitham said.<\/p>\n By January of this year, the families of Shallal al-Auja and the adjacent community of Ras Ein al-Auja \u2013 primary targets of settler violence for months \u2013 concluded they had no choice but to leave. Haitham\u2019s family was among them.<\/p>\n These days, he thinks a lot about the friends he grew up with, longing for the football pitch where they played every evening, and the funerals and weddings that bound their Bedouin community together.<\/p>\n The former community now finds itself dispersed across the West Bank, with aid from international organisations likely to end soon, and a lack of electricity and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re just fighting for survival, and all that joy of being all together has now dissipated into just us trying to live to the next day,\u201d Haitham says.<\/p>\n Passover brought a rash of videos from across the West Bank of settlers picnicking, hiking and praying in areas Palestinians had recently been driven from.<\/p>\n It was, Pacheco explained, an organised effort. \u201cFor the vacation, they\u2019ve set up these \u2018get to know the Holy Land\u2019 hikes,\u201d she said, adding that settlers had \u201cintentionally picked\u201d areas in the West Bank under partial or total Palestinian administrative control (referred to as Areas B and A, respectively), a deliberate push beyond Area C, which is under the full control of Israel.<\/p>\n It reflected, Pacheco said, a hardening of settler ideology. \u201cThe settlers have said it \u2013 the plan is to empty out C, push [Palestinians] into B, push them into A. Now, they have a new one: It\u2019s all ours.\u201d<\/p>\n In settler chat groups, one slogan has gained currency: \u201cMarching towards the expulsion of the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n That march pushed forward in recent months in Hammam al-Maleh, a once-touristic area in the northern Jordan Valley featuring hot springs and Mamluk-era remains. With settler shepherds employing the same violent playbook as elsewhere, the Palestinian shepherding community was driven to a near-wholesale evacuation in the past month.<\/p>\n In videos spread during Passover, what appeared to be hundreds of settlers gathered for music and prayers just outside Hammam al-Maleh\u2019s abandoned school, which had not long ago served more than 100 students from the surrounding area.<\/p>\n Muhammad \u2013 who asked that his full name not be used, fearing retribution from Israeli authorities \u2013 is the last permanent resident of Hammam al-Maleh, refusing to leave. The displaced families watching the Passover video from wherever they had scattered, he said, \u201cwere extremely hurt \u2013 not only the children, but also their parents, because they saw their homes in the background. They saw the land they were kicked out of.\u201d<\/p>\n The pattern of violence that Muhammad describes in Hammam al-Maleh mirrors closely what Haitham describes happened in the al-Auja area: Livestock invasions around people\u2019s homes, attacks on property, intimidation of women and children, with the Israeli military often coming to aid settlers rather than Palestinian residents under attack, and often the detention and arrest of the Palestinians.<\/p>\n But the northern Jordan Valley has been the location of some of the most brutal settler attacks lately, including the reported sexual assault of a father in front of his tied-up children in Khirbet Hamsa al-Fawqa, and the brutal beating of an elderly man in Tayasir. \u201cThe settlers have no mercy,\u201d explained Muhammad. \u201c[These settlers] don\u2019t want to only attack able-bodied men. They specifically go after the ones they know can\u2019t defend themselves. So they target the children and the elderly.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t want the land. It\u2019s just: How do we kick Palestinians out?\u201d<\/p>\n On March 8, Gilad Shriki, commander of the Israeli forces\u2019 Jordan Valley Brigade, came and warned Hammam al-Maleh and several other communities in the area to leave, declaring that \u201cArea C will soon be cleared of Palestinians,\u201d according to Palestinian activists in the Jordan Valley.<\/p>\n Haitham\u2019s new home in the southern Jordan Valley now houses about 120 families from several communities that came there after fleeing settler violence. Located in Area A and on land owned by the Islamic Waqf, they had hoped they would be safe. But \u201cthe same people that used to harass us have just appeared in the same area again,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re doing the same provocations [land invasions]. They are chasing the children with the ATVs.\u201d<\/p>\n Fearing for their safety, Muhammad moved his wife and four small children \u2013 including a nine-year-old daughter who is disabled and unable to speak \u2013 from Hammam al-Maleh to Tayasir, which is in Area B. But \u201cthe same settlers that attacked us in Hammam al-Maleh are now chasing them there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a continuous pattern of chasing Palestinians, even if they leave \u2013 to displace them again,\u201d said Muhammad. \u201cThat\u2019s part of why I\u2019m not willing to move \u2013 I know it\u2019s not going to end here.\u201d<\/p>\n With more than 5,600 people displaced since 2023, according to OCHA\u2019s latest figures, the crisis has stretched far beyond the West Bank Protection Consortium\u2019s original Area C mandate. \u201cAnd now, we\u2019re witnessing the most worrisome escalation in their violence \u2013 armed settlers repeatedly shooting and killing Palestinians,\u201d said Pacheco.<\/p>\n On April 8, settlers shot and killed Alaa Sobeih inside his greenhouse in Tayasir \u2013 where Muhammad\u2019s family and many others from Hammam al-Maleh had fled.<\/p>\n Pacheco referred to the UN\u2019s early warning indicators for mass atrocities. \u201cThis kind of incitement, this tolerance of violence against a distinct ethnic group by non-state actors with no accountability, and now public celebrations of the act \u2013 it\u2019s extremely disturbing,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just worrisome by what they\u2019re saying, but what this could potentially lead to very soon.\u201d<\/p>\n Though his neighbours\u2019 homes in Hammam al-Maleh have been dismantled, Muhammad is refusing to leave. \u201cIf I\u2019m not around, then they potentially won,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they go to my house and I\u2019m not there, they would post celebration photos.\u201d Despite the isolation and the violence, Muhammad remains in Hammam al-Maleh in part for \u201cthat satisfaction of proving [to them] that this land is ours\u201d.<\/p>\n When he left for three days during Eid to visit his family, settlers stripped the community of generators, electrical cables and solar panels, leaving them without reliable electricity.<\/p>\n He returned anyway.<\/p>\n Without any sheep to graze, he patrols the community each day. The settlers know he is there, and he makes sure of it.<\/p>\n Muhammad, refusing to leave at all, put it simply: \u201cI was born here. I was raised here. I am not willing to leave. Even if I die here \u2013 I will die happy, because I stayed on my land.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jordan Valley, Occupied West Bank \u2013 Haitham al-Zayed, 24, says his fondest memories as a child were spent swimming in al-Auja\u2019s lush pools. \u201cYou\u2019d always find someone there during hot days. Everyone went there to cool down,\u201d he said. Three months after he and his family were forcibly displaced by Jewish settlers from Shallal al-Auja […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"TOPSHOT](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/afp_69d91d0bcb82-1775836427.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C514&quality=80\")
\u2018Fighting for our survival\u2019<\/h2>\n
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New plan: \u2018It\u2019s all ours\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018It\u2019s not going to end here\u2019<\/h2>\n
Refusing to leave<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"