Terrorized by settlers, Palestinian shepherds in the West Bank are being forced to leave the villages they have lived in for decades. Last week it was the turn of Al-Baqa’a
Haaretz | Gideon Levy| Sep 9, 2023
All that remains in the valley now is black, scorched earth, a memento of what was until last week a place of human habitation. There also is a sheep pen, which the banished residents left behind as a memorial or perhaps also in the hope of better days, when they will be able to return to their land – a prospect that looks very far-fetched indeed at present.
Across from the blackened soil loom two tents that portend evil, along with a van and a tractor, all belonging to the lords of the land: the settlers who invaded this shepherding community and terrorized its residents day and night until last Friday, the last of the families, who had lived here for more than 40 years, set out for the desert to find a new place of habitation. They could no longer bear the attacks and raids by the settlers and their shameless grazing off flocks on the Palestinians’ land, their intimidation of the shepherds’ children, the threats, the thefts and the assaults. Even the vaunted sumud – steadfastness – of the Palestinians has its limits.
Community after community of Bedouin shepherds, the weakest and most helpless population in the West Bank, are leaving the land they have dwelt on for decades, no longer able to bear the settlers’ violence, which has spiked sharply in recent months. Far from the eyes of Israelis and the international community, an unbelievable systematic population transfer is underway here – effectively the ethnic cleansing of vast areas in the South Hebron Hills, the Jordan Valley and now also of areas in the heart of the West Bank.
In July we witnessed the Abu Awwad family’s departure from their village, Khirbet Widady, after they were forced out by the intimidating tactics of settlers from Havat Meitarim. And a month before that, we accompanied 200 members of families that lived in Ein Samia and had to flee for their lives under the violent harassment of the settlers from unauthorized outposts near the settlement of Kochav Hashahar.
This week we arrived Al-Baqa’a, an arid expanse at the foot of the desert mountains abutting the Jordan Valley. The 60 or so members of this community were compelled to leave behind the land they lived on for 40-some years, and with it their memories, before scattering across the desert landscape. The settlers’ takeover not only robs people of their property, it also tears apart communities accustomed to dwelling together for generations.
The land – which in this case is owned by residents of the hilltop Palestinian village of Deir Dibwan – is rocky, parched and virtually unaccessible. The ethnic cleansing in this area continues apace. Arab-free, as “pure” as possible – a condition that is most easily attained when Bedouin shepherding communities are involved.
We meet the head of the Al-Baqa’a community, Mohammed Melihat, 59, at the new site where his two sons have now set up their home, about five kilometers south of where they once lived, in the middle of nowhere.
The two sons have pitched five tattered tents here. A dog and a rooster are sheltering under the water container, trying to survive in the broiling summer heat. Members of the extended family moved here on July 7; in the time that has elapsed they have been slapped with three eviction orders from the military government’s Civil Administration unit. The deadline to leave is September 20.
Melihat has six sons and a daughter; two of the sons, 23-year-old Ismail and his older brother, Ali, 28, moved here with their families. Their father is lodging with a friend in the village of Ramun, north of Al-Baqa’a, but he has been helping his sons establish their new “outpost” on privately owned land they received from the residents of Deir Dibwan. Of the family’s original flock of 600 sheep, only 150 remain.
Al-Baqa’a had been their home since 1980. The initial 25 families who settled there had gradually dispersed in the wake of demolition orders issued by the Israeli authorities and violence wielded by Israeli settlers. In recent years only 12 families remained, among them 30 children, and they too began to scatter every which way. Just the Melihats have ended up in the new site we are now visiting.
It beggars the imagination that any human being can even live in this inhospitable region, mountainous and arid, with no running water or electricity, with no access road or school or health clinic in sight. In a properly run country this area would become a heritage site: “This is how shepherds lived centuries ago.” Schoolchildren would be brought here to see the marvel. But in Israel it’s just another target of the settlers’ greed and insatiable craving for real estate.
Worst of all is the fact that these people have no protection against their oppressors. Nothing. Not from the police, not from the army, not from the Civil Administration, not from the Palestinian Authority. With their life and property hanging in the balance, they have been forced to give in, surrender and forsake their home. Utterly defenseless, the Melihat family had no choice but to follow suit.
Since 2000, life in Al-Baqa’a had become impossible. Settlers, apparently supported by soldiers and sometimes even with their active participation, made life a misery. Tear gas and stun grenades were thrown into the tents, water troughs and sheep were stolen. At first the marauders came from the Mitzpeh Hagit outpost, led by a settler named Gil. According to Mohammed, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA documented everything. While we’re talking to him during our visit this week, Patrick Kingsley, the New York Times bureau chief for Israel and the occupied territories, arrives. He and his paper take a far greater interest in the fate of the population here than most Israeli media outlets.
In September 2019, a settler named Neria Ben Pazi invaded an area near Ramun, after which the area residents’ troubles became even more severe. A few months beforehand, Ben Pazi had started to graze his sheep on Bedouin-owned land. He was removed twice by the Civil Administration but returned each time just a few hours later, thanks to what can be interpreted as the tacit consent and inaction of the Israeli authorities. The fix was in.
According to Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of the Torat Tzedek – Torah of Justice NGO, who spent many days, and nights, in recent months bodily protecting the residents of Al-Baqa’a from settler violence, Ben Pazi is the “champion” of settler outposts. He’s established four already; some of his sons live with him.
The settlers started to steal goods and farming equipment from the shepherds, including spare parts for tractors. At first, Ascherman says, they were cautious, but following the advent of the present government they shed all restraint and the violence has become more brutal. Local residents asked for the protection of the Civil Administration and were told by one of its representatives, “Capt. Fares,” to be in contact if problems should arise. Hardly a day passed without problems, but it’s worthless to even consider submitting a complaint.
In recent months the settlers’ actions against the wretched Bedouin shepherds have been documented by Iyad Hadad, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. The settlers prevented the shepherds’ water tankers from getting to the community and brought their own flocks to the troughs of the Bedouin to drink. On one occasion they also burned a tent. The result: Some 4,000 dunams (1,000 acres) of land were emptied of Palestinians and seized by the outposts.
On July 10, most of the families left Al-Baqa’a, with only two staying behind. In short order one of them, the family of Mustafa Arara, also pulled up stakes after their 7-year-old son was wounded by a settler. The second family, Musa Arara’s, left a week later, after all 13 of their water troughs disappeared: Ascherman saw the containers being hauled off by a tractor belonging to the settlers.
Musa’s family has moved for the present to the area of Wadi Qelt, which originates near Jerusalem and empties into the Dead Sea; Mustafa and his family have moved to the Jab’a area in the central West Bank. Three other families live near Taibe, northeast of Jerusalem. The very fabric of their family, cultural and social life has been ripped apart.
Where shall we go? Mohammed Melihat’s question is swallowed up in the vastness of the desert. “If they come to demolish things here, where will I go?” he asks again, futilely. His forebears from the Kaabneh tribe – whom Israel evicted from the South Hebron Hills in 1948 and whose land became part of the State of Israel – asked the same question.
“Imagine what it’s like,” Melihat says, “to leave a village in which you have lived most of your life and where your children were born.”