Relentless harassment by Israeli settlers had already driven Ahmed Kaabneh’s brothers out of their Bedouin community in the central occupied West Bank.
Still, Kaabneh clung to the land his family had tended for generations, refusing to abandon the only home he had ever known.
That resolve shattered when a group of young settlers erected a shack barely 100 meters above his house and began intimidating his children.
At 45, Kaabneh said he finally understood he had no real choice – he, too, had to flee.
Now the small patchwork of wood and metal homes where his father and grandfather once lived stands deserted, echoing the fate of dozens of Bedouin communities across the West Bank.
“It is very difficult ... because you leave an area where you lived for 45 years. Not a day or two or three, but nearly a lifetime,” Kaabneh told Agence France-Presse (AFP) from his family’s new makeshift dwelling in the rocky hills north of Jericho.
“But what can you do? They are the strong ones, and we are the weak. We have no power.”
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and violence there has surged since the Gaza war erupted in October 2023 after Hamas’ incursion into southern Israel.
According to the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA, roughly 3,200 Palestinians from dozens of Bedouin and herding communities have been forced from their homes by settler violence and movement restrictions since October 2023.
The United Nations said this October was the worst month for settler violence since it began recording incidents in 2006.
Almost none of the perpetrators have been held to account by Israeli authorities.
Kaabneh, four of his brothers and their families now live together about 13 kilometers (eight miles) northeast of their original homes, which sat in the al-Hathrura area.
Outside his freshly constructed metal house, boys kicked a soccer ball while washing hung from the line. But Kaabneh said the area didn’t feel like home.
“We are in a place we have never lived in before, and life here is hard,” he said.
Alongside surging violence, the number of settler outposts has exploded in the West Bank.
While all Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law, outposts are also prohibited under Israeli law. But many end up being legalized by Israeli authorities.
AFP visited Kaabneh in the al-Hathrura area weeks before he was forced to flee.
On the dirt road to his family’s compound, caravans and an Israeli flag atop a hill marked an outpost established earlier this year – one of several to have sprung up in the area.
On the other side of the track, in the valley, lay the wreckage of another Bedouin compound whose residents had recently fled.
While in Kaabneh’s cluster of homes, AFP witnessed two settlers driving to the top of a hill to surveil the Bedouins below.
“The situation is terrifying,” Kaabneh said at the time, with life becoming almost untenable because of daily harassment and shrinking grazing land.
Less than three weeks later, the homes were deserted.
Kaabneh said the settlers “would shout all night, throw stones and walk through the middle of the houses.
“They didn’t allow us to sleep at night, nor move freely during the day.”
These days, only activists and the occasional stray cat wander the remnants of Kaabneh’s former life, where upturned children’s bikes and discarded shoes reveal the chaotic departure.
“We are here to keep an eye on the property ... because a lot of places that are abandoned are usually looted by the settlements,” said Sahar Kan-Tor, 29, an Israeli activist with the Israeli-Palestinian grassroots group Standing Together.
Meanwhile, settlers with a quad bike and a digger were busy dismantling their hilltop shack and replacing it with a sofa and table.
“They thrive on chaos,” Kan-Tor said.
“It is, in a way, a land without laws. There are authorities roaming around, but nothing is enforced, or very rarely enforced.”
A report by Israeli settlement watchdogs last December said settlers had used shepherding outposts to seize 14% of the West Bank in recent years.
NGOs Peace Now and Kerem Navot said settlers were acting “with the backing of the Israeli government and military.”
Some members of Israel’s right-wing government are settlers themselves, and far-right ministers have called for the West Bank’s annexation.
Kan-Tor said he believed settlers were targeting this stretch of the West Bank because of its significance for a contiguous Palestinian state.
But Kaabneh said the threat of attacks loomed even in his new location in the east of the territory.
He said settlers had already driven along the track leading to his family’s homes and watched them from the hill above.
“Even this area, which should be considered safe, is not truly safe,” Kaabneh said.
“They pursue us everywhere.”
