Jordan Valley, Occupied West Bank – Haitham al-Zayed, 24, says his fondest memories as a child were spent swimming in al-Auja’s lush pools. Everyone went there to cool down,” he said. Three months after he and his family were forcibly displaced by Jewish settlers from Shallal al-Auja – located beside the stream coming down from al-Auja spring in the southern occupied West Bank – 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.
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. Look at this wonder,” one man announced.
That are going around this area with their flocks. I saw them stubbornly redeeming the land for us.” For Haitham, watching the video from the area his family has been displaced to – 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 – the footage was “very hard to see”, 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.
It’s tied to the expansion of annexation in the West Bank.” According to the United Nations’ 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 – already exceeding the highest annual figure recorded in any of the previous three years. Allegra Pacheco, chief of party of the West Bank Protection Consortium – 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 – 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 – a serious violation of international law.
For years, settlers had conducted what he called “provocative tours” around his community. Then, after Israel’s 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’s main water source and summer gathering spots. Armed settlers on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) – funded by the Israeli government and provided to settler outposts, which are unauthorised and technically illegal under both Israeli and international law – chased livestock and children.
Israeli soldiers – and often settlers in military fatigues – raided homes to interrogate or detain residents on the basis of settler claims. By January of this year, the families of Shallal al-Auja and the adjacent community of Ras Ein al-Auja – primary targets of settler violence for months – concluded they had no choice but to leave. Haitham’s family was among them.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
