Israel wipes out Ras Ain al-Auja in the West Bank

They had not yet finished dismantling their homes and packing their belongings onto trucks before Israeli shepherds — many of them armed — rolled in between homes with hundreds of sheep, taking over the blooming valley of Ras Ain al-Auja. 

Since 10 January, dozens of Palestinian families in the village, which sits north of the city of Jericho in the occupied West Bank, have been forcibly transferred from the lands they’ve lived on for generations amid record levels of state-backed settler violence and land theft. 

Ras Ain al-Auja was once one of the largest Palestinian Bedouin villages in the entire West Bank, comprising 1,200 residents. Until recently, it was the last remaining Bedouin village between the governorates of Ramallah and Jericho, as other such communities have already been forcibly displaced and wiped off the map over the past several years. 

Now, most of the 120 families in Ras Ain al-Auja have also been driven out.

“We’ve been suffering for over two years. We’ve had enough,” Salameh Mahmoud Salameh, the village spokesperson, told Mondoweiss from the village. “ We’ve been living under a settler siege. We’ve reached a point where if your son is sick, you can’t take him to the doctor.”

As he packed his belongings, Salameh described how he and his family had been isolated from the rest of the village and denied access to their water supplies and most other basic supplies. “We can’t stay anymore. We’re afraid for our children and our families. We’re afraid they might burn our village,” he said. 

“We feel that 1948 and 1967 are recurring, and that we’re heading toward an unknown fate,” Salameh added, referencing the mass expulsions of Palestinians during those years.

The scene in Ras Ain al-Auja is dominated by heartbreak and raw indignation. Young and old work side by side, dismantling their own lives, salvaging whatever they can carry as their existence is erased in real time.

Ras Ain al-Auja has experienced a marked increase in settler encroachment on the lives of its residents over the past two years, escalating into a daily reality as armed and masked settlers descend on the village night after night, raiding homes, beating residents, stealing sheep, and terrorizing families. Between August 2024 and May 2025, more than 2,200 sheep were taken in at least five attacks. About 1,500 were stolen in a single night.

“Our homes, our land, our sheep are gone. Our children are terrorized for life,” Muhammad Hreizat, a resident facing displacement, told Mondoweiss. “For over a week, we have been demolishing our homes with our own hands. This is not voluntary. The settlers forced us. Netanyahu’s government forced us.”

He pauses, then asks the question that has been hanging over the village. “We are in a horrible situation. Where are we supposed to go?”

“This is a new Nakba,” he adds. “We do not need humanitarian aid. We need people to stand with us — to help defend us and our land.”

‘No one is standing with us’

Since the election of the current Israeli government into office in 2022, armed illegal Israeli settlers, directly funded by the state, have been forcibly expelling Palestinian villages, building illegal “shepherding outposts” and taking over large swathes of land at unprecedented rates. Most recently, the Palestinian hamlet of Yannoun in the northern West Bank was completely emptied of its inhabitants after months of Israeli settler attacks.

Palestinian Bedouin villages and communities have been the hardest hit, with over 60 communities completely expelled and erased, most of them after the start of the Gaza genocide.

During this time, top Israeli officials have openly pushed for the unilateral annexation of the occupied West Bank in violation of international law, explicitly stating an apartheid policy of “maximum land, minimum [Palestinian] population.” 

Rasmiyeh Ali, an elderly woman facing displacement from Ras Ain al-Auja, told Mondoweiss that settlers tried to burn her community’s homes about a month ago.  

“The other day they chased after our children with a tractor in an attempt to run them over,” Ali said, decades of suffering apparent on her face. “If it weren’t for the foreign activists protecting them, he would have hit them.”

Jamal Jumaa, the coordinator of the grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall campaign, believes it is important not to view the forcible transfer of Palestinians as the work of settlers alone. 

“This is state terrorism,” Jumaa told Mondoweiss. “These efforts are supported formally by the occupying state, using the settlers to implement its plans.” 

At least 90 percent of the Jordan Valley is already under the direct control of the Israeli state and settlers. In June 2024, the Israeli military declared 12,000 dunams of Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley (where Ras Ain al-Auja is located) as “state land.” It was the largest land seizure in the occupied West Bank since the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, over the past several years, the Israeli government and other quasi-governmental organizations like the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) have funded the building of illegal outposts and provided those outposts with basic services to the tune of over $26 million. 

But the impact of the erasure of Ras Ain al-Auja and its seizure by settlers goes well beyond the village itself. The area was once highly popular among Palestinians for the beautiful spring nearby, after which the village is named. The spring begins from the eastern slopes of the Ramallah and al-Bireh highlands, and its water channels extend for over 27 kilometers, feeding numerous oases and streams in the Jordan Valley.  

“The occupation wants this area because it is a local tourism site,” said Zayed. “In spring, people are here by the busloads.” 

Now, the entire area is filled with settlers, and the spring has been rendered off-limits to any Palestinians. 

While Israel is the primary cause for the ongoing erasure of Ras Ain al-Auja, many residents of the village say that Palestinian officials have also failed to take action. 

“There was no intervention from the government or the governorate of Jericho,” said Zayed. “These people have no alternative. We are in the thick of winter. If I leave, how will I ensure my children’s education is completed? We have disabled family members, where will I go with them? No one is standing with us. Our areas are completely marginalized.” 

Jumaa agrees. 

“These people needed protection. It is the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority to carry out this role,” he said. “But they are sidestepping all their responsibilities.”  

“There is a large responsibility on those who consider themselves to be the representatives of the Palestinian people,” Jumaa continued. “Yet, they are simply leaving people to their fate.” 

Zena al-Tahhan is a freelance TV reporter and writer based in occupied Jerusalem.