Umm al-Khair, Occupied West Financial institution — There have been weddings in Umm al-Khair this week, however virtually nobody danced. The small Bedouin village, positioned in Masafer Yatta, was marrying off two of its sons. Cauldrons of slow-cooked lamb meat for mansaf – a big platter of conventional Arabic meals – fed the entire neighborhood. However there was no dahiyya, the road dance and chant that usually opens a Bedouin wedding ceremony.
Residents mentioned it didn’t really feel proper coming so quickly after the primary anniversary of the killing of Umm al-Khair activist and neighborhood chief Awdah Hathaleen, allegedly by Israeli settler Yinon Levi. The neighborhood continues to endure every day settler assaults, arrests and incursions by Israeli troopers, and the specter of additional demolitions by Israeli authorities looms.
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Throughout celebrations, households unfold out in numerous areas fairly than gathering in a single place, cautious of drawing any consideration that, prior to now, has introduced troopers to disrupt the celebrations.
“There’s a wedding ceremony, however they don’t seem to be letting us have fun quietly,” mentioned Tariq Hathaleen, an English trainer and neighborhood chief in Umm al-Khair.
On Thursday, the primary day of the marriage, Shimon Atiya – the Israeli settler behind the unlawful outpost of Havat Shorashim, established roughly 800 metres from the village in 2022, and who has been underneath a restraining order since July 2025 for harassing Umm al-Khair households — crashed the marriage in the one model he is aware of. He introduced his livestock to graze in a resident’s vegetable backyard, escorted by Israeli troopers who stood by because it occurred.
When villagers instructed the troopers that the plot is recognised as Umm al-Khair land, they had been instructed the maps had modified; after they requested to see the brand new maps, they had been refused. That evening, the outpost’s fence in direction of the village properties was torn down – a prelude to pushing the boundary additional in, residents consider.
Hathaleen says the settlers’ timing was a response to Levi’s indictment days earlier — one of many few occasions an Israeli has been charged with the killing of a Palestinian within the occupied West Financial institution since October 2023.
Simply a few days earlier than, on Thursday, Hathaleen watched as buildings and autos within the close by Palestinian neighborhood of Khirbet Tuba had been set ablaze by settler arsonists.
“The occupation at all times tried very onerous to erase the Palestinian Indigenous folks and their historical past, their legacy, their heritage,” Tariq mentioned. “This actually jogs my memory of the Nakba, and the way the Israelis destroyed Palestinian cities and villages”, he famous, even planting cactus over the ruins to bury the proof. “Again then it wasn’t documented. These days, it’s occurring, however it’s documented.”
Sunday marks the United Nations’ Worldwide Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. In Umm al-Khair, the marriage felt symbolic of the threats to Indigenous Palestinians’ lifestyle and their primary presence on their very own land.
‘They attempt to imitate us’
In accordance with native Palestinians and watchdog NGOs, the threats dealing with Palestinians within the occupied West Financial institution, together with East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip embrace detentions, killings, demolitions, restrictions on motion and evictions.
Since October 2023, Israel has killed 1,100 Palestinians within the occupied West Financial institution, together with 242 minors, in line with the Israeli NGO B’Tselem. Israel has additionally demolished greater than 3,000 Palestinian properties since October 2023, the overwhelming majority resulting from a scarcity of Israeli-issued permits that Palestinians in Space C are routinely denied.
In accordance with the newest figures from the UN’s Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), demolitions and settler violence displaced a median of 17 folks a day this yr, double the speed of the earlier three years.
A June report by the West Financial institution Safety Consortium, which incorporates the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and displays greater than 200 communities it judges liable to forcible switch, mentioned 96 p.c of those that had been forcibly displaced had been beforehand depending on farming or herding. They’ve principally misplaced entry to those lands or pastures.
Nevertheless, residents and watchdogs say such dispossession takes place inside a system of Israeli permits, demolition orders and land insurance policies managed by the state alongside hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding for settlements and outposts. Israeli NGO Peace Now counts 146 unlawful Israeli settlements within the occupied West Financial institution and 390 unauthorised outposts and farms.
In 2024, the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice discovered Israel’s continued presence within the occupied Palestinian territory illegal.
Amid dispossession of their conventional grazing lands, 13 constructions in Umm al-Khair had been issued demolition notices final October, following demolitions in 2024 that left a 3rd of the village homeless. The restraining order in opposition to Atiya, residents say, has executed little to cease him.
Tariq argues the erasure is just not solely bodily, however cultural additionally, and that it comes paired with an try by settlers to say the very Palestinian identification they’re displacing.
“The settlers these days attempt to imitate that way of life, constructing tents that they in all probability stole from Palestinians someplace, utilizing tractors to convey water from far-off,” he mentioned.
Younger males from the hilltop outposts may be seen grazing camels, goats and sheep. All of the whereas, Tariq observes them sporting Palestinian scarves and even trying the Bedouin dialect when main their very own flocks.
“They know the Indigenous folks of this land are the Bedouins and different Palestinians. So, they attempt to imitate that – to indicate to themselves and to the world that they’re the Indigenous folks of this land,” he added. “[But] this land doesn’t relate to them, as a result of solely the Indigenous folks of this land know learn how to stay on this land.”
‘We’re the Indigenous folks of this land’
Many outpost settlers function navy reservists whereas dwelling on the farms themselves, Tariq famous – a standing that comes with state-issued weapons.
He recalled Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly distributing all-terrain autos to South Hebron Hills outpost settlers. He additionally remembers the day Awdah was killed, when troopers let Levi level out 5 neighborhood members for arrest.
“This isn’t solely settler terrorism backed up by the state,” Tariq mentioned. “It’s the state’s plan, carried out by the settlers, effectively deliberate in rooms the place officers sit round a desk and inform them what to do.”
Yair Dvir, spokesperson for B’Tselem, mentioned: “Israel is finishing up ethnic cleaning within the West Financial institution and an all-out assault on the Palestinian folks. We see it on many ranges: navy violence and repression, dwelling demolitions, and the funding and backing of settler militias.”
Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the NRC, described the identical sample as a coordinated technique throughout the Israeli-occupied territories.
“For practically 80 years, we’ve seen Israeli efforts to drive Palestinians from their land play out, beginning with the Nakba and persevering with to the current day,” she mentioned. Low cited an acceleration of those actions since October 2023, when the genocidal conflict on Gaza started, that has seen increasing settlement infrastructure, rising West Financial institution demolitions alongside East Jerusalem evictions in neighbourhoods like Silwan. There was an “astronomical improve” in settler violence documented, Low added.
Gaza reveals the identical agenda however taken to the intense. Because the October 2025 “ceasefire”, greater than 1,200 folks have been killed in Gaza, on prime of a cumulative demise toll that has climbed previous 73,000 since October 2023, in line with Gaza’s Ministry of Well being.
In accordance with UN satellite tv for pc evaluation, roughly 81 p.c of all constructions in Gaza have been broken. Even with the “ceasefire”, OCHA stories that some 59 p.c of Gaza’s inhabitants confronted crisis-level meals shortages or worse between April and June, a share it initiatives will rise once more by yr’s finish as help funding shrinks.
Following successive campaigns of expansionism, the Israeli navy now controls not less than 64.9 p.c of Gaza. “These insurance policies are all working collectively,” Low mentioned. “They could be totally different ways, nevertheless it’s all a part of the identical agenda to drive Palestinians from their land and improve Israeli management over the territory and develop Israeli presence.”
Nonetheless, on the eve of a day meant to mark the world’s Indigenous peoples, Tariq was firm.
“They are going to strive 1,000,000 methods to erase the Palestinian Indigenous folks, however they are going to fail as a result of this land doesn’t communicate their language, it doesn’t carry their color, it doesn’t go by their ideologies,” he mentioned.
“That is our land, and we now have at all times been dwelling right here in concord – with nature, the desert, the mountains, the valleys of Palestine – as a result of we’re the Indigenous folks of this land, and we at all times might be. Their makes an attempt are failing, and can fail. Sooner or later, we are going to get our freedom.”
