Al-Baidar, an organization concerned with the rights of Bedouins in the West Bank, said that Israeli settlers forced 5 Palestinian families to leave a community they have lived in since the 1970s, and warned that deportation threatens the remaining residents of the community.

The general supervisor of the organization defending the rights of Bedouins, Hassan Malihat, said that a number of settlers attacked Bedouin families yesterday evening, Sunday, in the Sukhn area, east of the city of Nablus (north of the West Bank), and prevented them from grazing their sheep in the pastures, and denied them water.

Malehat stated that the harassment aimed at controlling large areas of Palestinian pastures forced 5 Bedouin families, numbering about 30 members, to leave at gunpoint. He pointed out that the residents of the Al-Sukhan community, estimated to number about 200 people, are threatened by the same fate.

Malihat explained that the residents of the community depend on grazing and livestock raising as their only source of income, while the beginning of their presence on the site dates back to the 1970s.

Seizure and warning

The organization's official warned that the departure of all families - if it occurs - would mean the settlers' seizure of large mountainous areas inhabited and moved by Bedouins and used for grazing and agriculture, exceeding 15 thousand dunams (a dunam equals a thousand square metres).

Malehat stressed that the Bedouin communities in particular in the Jordan Valley are subjected to "the largest ethnic cleansing process since the Nakba, as a result of settler terrorism and the lack of support from any party."

He explained that the Bedouin population feels the bitterness of alienation within their homeland, because they were left alone, exposed and isolated in an unequal battle with the settlers.

Malehat revealed statistics from his organization indicating that forced deportation has affected 28 Bedouin communities in the West Bank since October 7, 2023, in addition to 4 Bedouin communities that were deported before this date.

He pointed out the demolition of 6 schools in Bedouin communities during 2023, and the sabotage of 6 other schools, and indicated that the number of violations according to Al-Baidar Organization statistics in the same year amounted to 1,124 violations and assaults.

During 2024, Malihat said that the organization he runs monitored and documented approximately 460 violations. He said that the Israeli authorities and settlers devised a new policy at the beginning of this year against the Bedouins.

He explained that this policy consists of imposing a state of siege on citizens and their sheep within the vicinity of population centers, and imposing heavy financial fines on citizens who bring their sheep into the mountains for grazing, by the settlement council in the West Bank.