{"id":236692,"date":"2023-06-05T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2023-06-05T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=236692"},"modified":"2023-06-02T04:37:12","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T03:37:12","slug":"the-slow-ethnic-cleansing-of-ein-samiyas-bedouin-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/06\/the-slow-ethnic-cleansing-of-ein-samiyas-bedouin-community\/","title":{"rendered":"The Slow Ethnic Cleansing of Ein Samiya\u2019s Bedouin Community"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Israeli settlers and military systematically made life unbearable for the Bedouin community living in the West Bank’s Ein Samiya region. On May 22 they were forced to leave their lands and were displaced for the fourth time since 1969.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>

Children from the Kaabaneh community gather around the hills of al-Mughayyir following their expulsion by Israeli forces and settlers from Ein Samiya a day earlier.
(Photo: Majd Darwish\/Mondoweiss. May 25, 2023)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

31 May 2023 –<\/em>On Monday, May 22, at least 16 Palestinian families (almost 170 people) were forcibly expelled from their homes near the Ein Samiya spring<\/a> and the Palestinian village of Kufr Malek, 27 kilometers northeast of Ramallah.<\/p>\n

The spring is wedged between Kufr Malek and the illegal Jewish-only colony of Kohav HaShahar and the nearby illegal outpost of Moaz Ester. The Bedouin community, part of the Ka\u2019abneh clan, has lived in that area for more than three decades, comprising 16 families living as herders and working in agriculture.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday evening, May 24, the Ka\u2019abneh clan finished moving the last of their belongings to a new location a few hundred meters away from their former homes. It was a forced resettlement following weeks of settler and police harassment that made life unbearable for the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened yesterday was a neo-Nakba,<\/em>\u201d Abu Najeh Ka\u2019abneh, 81, told Mondoweiss <\/em>on Thursday evening outside of the village of al-Mughayyir, where the community had relocated.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>Record, record,\u201d Abu Najeh said firmly. \u201cDon\u2019t get the information wrong. I\u2019ll speak slower, but focus and write.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting among a circle of men from his community as children dart in and out of the main sitting tent, Abu Najeh spoke with frustration and fear as he recounted the harrowing experience of the past week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe attack on Monday, May 22, was preceded by several days of continuous harassment,\u201d Abu Najeh told Mondoweiss. <\/em>\u201cOn May 16, settlers came and stole 37 sheep from our community in Ein Samiya, and I called the Red Cross to help us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Abu Najeh had reached out to the Red Cross because the Israeli police had assaulted a 51-year-old herder from the community on May 16, claiming that his sheep belonged to one of the settlers of the Kohav HaShachar settlement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the herder, Ata, wanted to say something,<\/em> the police handcuffed him,\u201d Abu Najeh said, taking a deep breath before continuing. \u201cAnd when the herder \u2014 he\u2019s the owner of the sheep \u2014 used his phone to try and call one of us, the police took it from him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The community\u2019s youth eventually saw the altercation with the police and spread the news about the incident until it reached Abu Najeh. \u201cThis is a kidnapping, no?\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the community members, Ata was released at around 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, the 16th. \u201cHe was fined 1500 shekels, and his 37 sheep were never returned,\u201d Abu Najeh testified. \u201cThe price of a single sheep is between 1200-2000 shekels. Do the math,\u201d Abu Najeh said, repeating once more the number of sheep stolen: \u201cThirty-seven.\u201d The man\u2019s entire livelihood depended on the livestock, with a family of 20 dependent on him for their daily needs.<\/p>\n

A few days later, Abu Najeh and 170 others in his community were forced to pack up what they could manage to carry from their homes and belongings.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Palestinians, who must protect us? Shouldn\u2019t it be our representatives?\u201d Khader Ka\u2019abneh, another member of the Bedouin community, told Mondoweiss. <\/em>Standing up from his seated position, Khader began to release his pent-up indignation. \u201cUnfortunately, during the Oslo Accords, our issues were not discussed, and what we experienced days ago is an even bigger Nakba.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

For the Bedouin communities across Palestine, the herding lifestyle they uphold allows them to travel around Palestine\u2019s landscape, further solidifying the presence of Palestinians in various areas around Jericho, the Jordan Valley, and the Mua\u2019arajat \u2014 all at risk of Israeli annexation. Yet the burdens of surviving, coupled with the internalization of a feeling of duty towards protecting the land from settler theft, weigh heavily on Palestinian Bedouins.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the only home my family has known,\u201d Umm Najeh, Abu Najeh\u2019s wife, told Mondoweiss<\/em> as she sat on a plastic chair in a newly erected Bedouin tent less than 12 hours after the expulsion. \u201cI have given birth to all eight of my children on that land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Umm Najeh\u2019s eldest son is 32 years old, and her youngest is 12. Neither knows a home outside of the hills they have wandered with their sheep near Kufr Malek their entire lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe children are constantly afraid of them,\u201d Umm Najeh said as Jamal, 12, passed the tent where she and other women from the community sat, rebuilding their homes and arranging what little remained of their belongings.<\/p>\n

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Children of the community exploring the hills of their new location following their displacement on May 24th. (Photo: Majd Darwish\/Mondoweiss. May 25, 2023)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Slow ethnic cleansing<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cThe settlers just kept coming more often, every night and almost daily,\u201d Umm Najah told Mondoweiss <\/em>as she washed and chopped some parsley for dinner.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, before we used to be able to call the police to interfere when settlers attack,\u201d Abu Najeh explained. \u201cNow, in the last two years or so, the police themselves have been initiating the assaults.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the community, Israeli border police<\/a> have not only been guarding settlers during their rampages but have at times directly joined in on the violence. \u201cIf the police saw our blood spilling in front of them from the settlers, they would still call us liars,\u201d Abu Najeh explained.<\/p>\n

Palestinian Bedouins mostly live in Area C, which according to the Oslo Accords comprises more than 65% of the West Bank, and is under settler and Israeli military rule. This means that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has no jurisdiction in the area, so for Palestinian Bedouins, the only recourse in the face of settler violence is to appeal to the Israeli authorities.<\/p>\n

In addition to the intensified violence to which the Ka\u2019abneh community has been exposed over the past five years, the Bedouin clan has also become financially drained due to the theft of their sheep and livestock. Coupled with settlers\u2019 night incursions aiming to push them out, they were eventually forced to relocate to the village of al-Mughayyer \u2014 the product of a policy of slow ethnic cleansing by making life so unbearable that they leave.<\/p>\n

The community fears they may be seen as having given up on their lands in Ein Samiya. \u201cThere are people that say we just chose to leave,\u201d Khader told Mondoweiss, <\/em>in a voice more angry than pained. \u201cI see on social media, some said we just chose to leave. But those five years of settler attacks on our children and women, that was enough pain. That was enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n
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Jamal Ka\u2019abneh, 12, broke his arm as he escaped settlers on the evening of the expulsion from Ein Samiya on May 24.
\n(Photo: Majd Darwish\/Mondoweiss. May 25, 2023)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

At that moment, his 12-year-old son Jamal held up his arm, hiding underneath a black scarf tied to his neck, serving as a makeshift sling \u2014 he had broken his arm running away from settlers in the moments leading up to the community\u2019s violent expulsion on May 24.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe couldn\u2019t take it anymore. I swear, I promise, if we had support \u2014 at least take the women and children to keep them safe \u2014 we would have stayed and remained guardians of the land,\u201d Khader said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday was the biggest Nakba we experienced,\u201d Abu Najeh said. \u201cLook at us, we don\u2019t know how to sit, how to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn two days, we had to rebuild a home,\u201d Umm Najeh pointed to the cluster of small metal barracks and tents which now served as the community\u2019s temporary home. \u201cLook at this, we were able to at least rebuild these rooms for receiving guests, and here we are with the grace of God, rebuilding still,\u201d she said with a smile that seemed to hold back a flow of tears.<\/p>\n

\u2018The settler is the state, and the state is the settler\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

During the first three months of 2023, Israeli settlers in the West Bank escalated their attacks on Palestinian farmers and herders. The Israeli human rights organization, B\u2019tselem<\/a>, recorded at least 108 different incidents where settlers, often joined by the police or the military, assaulted farmers, uprooted trees, and beat Palestinian civilians and children. As for the year before that, 2022 saw a record high<\/a> of settler attacks in the West Bank, while between 2010 and 2019<\/a>, thousands of settler attacks were also recorded. In February of this year, Israeli settlers committed a pogrom<\/a> in the Palestinian town of Huwwara outside of Nablus, killing a Palestinian man, injuring dozens, terrorizing thousands in an arson rampage, and costing millions of shekels\u2019 worth of property damage.<\/p>\n

The displacement of the Bedouins of the Ein Samiya region is a part of this trajectory of rising settler violence, but it is also tied to the evolution of the neighboring settlements of Moaz Esther and Kohav HaShachar.<\/p>\n

The Kohav HaShahar settlement, founded in 1980 for 280 Israeli settler families, is situated between the Palestinian towns and villages of Ramon, the final Palestinian town before the Jordan Valley. Currently, over 400 settler families<\/a> live in the settlement, which advertises itself as a \u201creligious settlement with a community that permeates warmhearted and caring family life.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the Moaz Esther illegal outpost is marketed as the only \u201call-girl hilltop<\/a>\u201d promoting women\u2019s participation in settlement expansion as a duty incumbent upon every Jewish person. The outpost was founded in 2006<\/a> in memory of Esther Galia, killed in a drive-by shooting near the settlement of Rimonim at the peak of the Second Intifada when Israeli forces committed crimes against humanity<\/a> in the West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n

By February 2020<\/a>, Israeli authorities and police had dismantled two Israeli settler tents at the illegal outpost of Kohav HaShachar, clashing with settlers and arresting at least one rioter who hurled stones and assaulted police. However, following the Unity Intifada of 2021<\/a>, when Palestinians engaged in collective mass mobilization from the river to the sea for the first time in decades, Israeli violence from settlers and the army increased. At the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was facing corruption charges, gave the green light for joint settler, military, and police violence against Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\n
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Khader Ka\u2019abneh describes the attacks faced by him and his community in the years preceding their displacement on May 24, 2023.
\n(Photo: Majd Darwish\/Mondoweiss. May 25, 2023)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cYou need to focus, and please understand,\u201d Khader Ka\u2019abneh tells Mondoweiss<\/em>. \u201cThe settler is the state and the state is the settler. They are one and the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Israel has attempted to separate the settlers in the West Bank from those in the army, Israeli policymakers represent settler aspirations. Those aspirations have tended to gather steam during periods of heightened Palestinian resistance. In 2018, for instance, then Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel had vowed<\/a> that \u201cour revenge is settlement and holding tight to the land,\u201d which he said following the stabbing of Israeli settler Adiel Kolman during the peak of Israel\u2019s attempts to solidify control over East Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope we\u2019ll continue to advance construction in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and make a clear decision that between the Jordan [River] and [Mediterannean] Sea there will only be one sovereign state \u2014 the State of Israel,\u201d Ariel affirmed alongside Nir Barakat, then Mayor of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Abu Najeh confirmed that period as one of heightened settler and military theft of land and property. \u201cIn the last five years, the police have been bringing settlers who have sheep, and they would come to those herding areas,\u201d Abu Najeh explained.<\/p>\n

A lifetime of expulsions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Tender and shy, Umm Najeh laments the lands she has known for over three decades. \u201cThat was my home, a dear place to me,\u201d she told Mondoweiss. <\/em>\u201cI had all my eight children on that land,\u201d she said. \u201cHere we are now, displaced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Umm Najeh, the most recent expulsion, and the string of harassment and theft that preceded it, is not where the story of Abu Najeh begins \u2014 he has been forcibly expelled from his land four times ever since 1969.<\/p>\n

\u201cPay attention. Record,\u201d Abu Najeh reiterated as the 81-year-old narrated the trail of dispossession that colored his life. \u201cI was born in the area of Hebron, and grew up in al-Ouja, where I stayed until 1967, when we were given documents to stay there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Al-Ouja, an area ten kilometers north of Jericho consisting of the Ouja valley, receives a stream of water originating from Ein Samiya near Ramallah. From there, the Ouja stream flows into the Jordan River. Due to the herding lifestyle of Bedouin communities, natural water sources and their relationship with the wider ecosystem dictates how they select their area of living.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn September of 1969, [Israeli authorities and forces] gave us 24 hours to gather everything and leave for the Ramallah area,\u201d Abu Najeh said, recalling his first experience of expulsion. <\/em>That September was when the Ka\u2019abneh community moved to the Mua\u2019rajat <\/a>area near Ramallah.<\/p>\n

Six months later, in March of 1970, the community was forced out of their homes again, marking Abu Najeh\u2019s second experience of expulsion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was raining and [the army] came and began forcing us out. They did it in the rain.\u201d The Israeli army was pushing the family out under the pretext of using the area for military purposes. \u201c[The military] took us almost 3-4 kilometers away in their vehicles,\u201d Abu Najeh recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey practiced on us, on our homes, so they can drive us out.\u201d<\/em><\/strong>
\n— Abu Najeh<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Israeli authorities displaced the community to an area 500 meters away from where they began building a new home six months earlier. This pushed them further into Ramallah, but the terror campaign didn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour or five military tents came and stayed for three or two months,\u201d Abu Najeh said. \u201cThen they came and started shooting bullets at us and our homes. The bullets would enter the homes and the children would run,\u201d Abu Najeh said. \u201c[The soldiers] left all the empty lands around us and began shooting in our direction,\u201d Abu Najeh said bitterly. \u201cYou understand why? So they can expel us, drive us out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That was when their third expulsion took place, as the Ka\u2019abneh clan escaped the Mu\u2019arajat under Israeli gunfire and resettled in the Ein Samiya region. Before the fourth and most recent expulsion in May of this year, the community had spent several uninterrupted decades living near Ein Samiya. \u201cAllah kept us safe from them, and so we managed to go to Ein Samiya, <\/em>where we have been since the 70s,\u201d Abu Najeh said, his tone betraying a nostalgia for the home that he has now known for decades.<\/p>\n

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Abu Najeh, head of the Ka\u2019abneh Bedouin community speaking on the expulsion and violence he and his community experienced.
\n(Photo: Majd Darwish\/Mondoweiss. May 25, 2023)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During their third expulsion in 1970, the Israeli army had converted their lands in the Mu\u2019arajat region into closed military \u201cfiring zones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey practiced on us, on our homes, so they can drive us out,\u201d Abu Najeh said.<\/p>\n

This policy of building \u201cfiring zones\u201d and \u201cmilitary bases\u201d continues to this day<\/a> as an instrument of slow ethnic cleansing, sectioning off vast swathes of land for military use and hence justifying land theft based on \u201cnational security\u201d needs.<\/p>\n

In the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea areas in Jericho, Israeli authorities declared almost half of the region<\/a> as a \u201cfiring zone.\u201d These areas<\/a>, which have the largest land reserves, constitute almost a third of the West Bank and are home to almost 80,000 Palestinians, 15,000 of whom are Palestinian Bedouins, sprawled across a few dozen community clusters. All of them are slowly being driven toward Ramallah.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndirect and direct forcible transfer is currently at the forefront of Israel\u2019s ideological agenda in area C,\u201d a report<\/a> published by MAAN Development Agency<\/a> in 2015 reported. \u201cFiring zones, initially established as a means of land control, are now being used to create an environment so hostile that Palestinians are forced to leave the area or live in conditions of deteriorating security,\u201d the report concluded.<\/p>\n

The web of experiences tracing four different expulsions allows Abu Najeh to judge the unfolding of the Israeli state\u2019s ethnic cleansing project over the years. \u201cThis year is worse than the war of 1967,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Losing to the ongoing Nakba<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The experiences of the Ka\u2019abneh clan have taught them that this recent expulsion will not be their last.<\/p>\n

\u201cTomorrow is darker than today, and the day after will be darker than tomorrow,\u201d Abu Najeh said bitterly around a group of men from his community the day after the expulsion from Ein Samiya.<\/p>\n

The community\u2019s skepticism of a less violent future stems from the repeated memories of expulsion and assault by settlers. In the early 1970s, almost as soon as the Ka\u2019abneh clan found some stability in Ein Samiya, Israeli courts began pushing one expulsion order after another. The community has spent year after year fighting them in court.<\/p>\n

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Kittens of the Bedouin community adjusting to their new homes following the community\u2019s expulsion from Ein Samiya towards al-Mughayyir.
\n(Photo: Mariam Barghouti\/ Mondoweiss May 25, 2023)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSince 1980 we have been fighting through courts against every expulsion order,\u201d Abu Najeh told Mondoweiss. <\/em>The orders from Israeli authorities for the expulsion of the community began in 1974, according to Abu Najeh.<\/p>\n

This year, mirroring the experience of the Ka\u2019abneh clan, other Bedouin communities in the Mu\u2019arajat area were forced to leave their homes<\/a> in February of this year, also relocating due to the severity of the attacks by Israeli forces and the lack of protection.<\/p>\n

As for the Ka\u2019abneh community, their relocation to the village of al-Mughayyir near Ramallah has put them in hostile terrain. Shortly after the clan arrived in the village, Israeli settlers attacked al-Mughayyir and its farmers. At around that same time, Palestinians faced a wave of lethal violence from Israeli settlers and the army<\/a> in other West Bank towns and villages.<\/p>\n

This has only further cemented the conviction that no place is safe from Israeli colonists.<\/p>\n

For Palestinians, this is nothing new and is seen as a continuation of what started in 1948<\/a>. And while Palestinians have witnessed the resurgence of resistance<\/a> to Israeli colonialism across the West Bank since early 2022, some communities have been unable to withstand the constant harassment and daily indignities of colonial erasure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot resist the Israeli state alone,\u201d Khader Ka\u2019abneh told Mondoweiss<\/em>, reiterating his earlier statement: \u201cThe settler is the state. The settler is the government. I can\u2019t fight that alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ata, the 51-year-old herder, echoed the disappointment, admitting that he can longer fight the settler attacks. \u201cI have been trying these past five years, and I can\u2019t anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mariam Barghouti is the Senior Palestine Correspondent for<\/em> Mondoweiss.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – mondoweiss.net<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

31 May 2023 – Israeli settlers and military systematically made life unbearable for the Bedouin community living in the West Bank’s Ein Samiya region. On May 22 they were forced to leave their lands and were displaced for the fourth time since 1969. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":105328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[928,532,101,100,2898,87,865,2414,2415,2416,767,771,427,85,2897,880,99,92,1025,886],"class_list":["post-236692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-bds-boycott-divestment-sanctions","tag-colonialism","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-ecocide","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israeli-apartheid","tag-israeli-army","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-middle-east","tag-nakba","tag-palestine","tag-palestine-israel","tag-sociocide","tag-state-terrorism","tag-structural-violence","tag-violent-conflict","tag-west-bank","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236692"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236695,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236692\/revisions\/236695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}