Palestinians face assault by [Israeli] gun, bulldozer and attack dog- ‘They took our home, our land, everything’: Palestinians displaced by illegal settlers tell their stories

Salah Abu Awad says he is haunted by memories of the night he was woken up by Israeli settlers who burst into his home and threatened him at gunpoint.

It was one of the many attacks that forced the 28-year-old shepherd and his family to dismantle their homes and abandon their land in the village of Widada in the occupied West Bank’s south Hebron hills.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/01/they-took-our-home-our-land-everything-palestinians-displaced-by-settlers-tell-their-stories

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Salah Abu Awad, 28, with his flock on Samoah lands, in the south Hebron hills. Abu Awad was forced to abandon Widada village due to constant settler violence and harassment. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

"In July last year, Abu Awad fled Widada, where his family had lived for decades, because he felt “caged and threatened”, he said. “We were afraid all the time, living in fear. It was not life.”

Abu Awad said that days earlier, Federman tried to steal his sheep at gunpoint while he was out grazing his flock.

It was the last straw for Abu Awad, who was still reeling from the shock of the home invasion in the early hours of 12 March 2023. Abu Awad recalled: “Yinon and Ely broke into my home. Ely came with an attack dog and a M16 rifle.

“They came inside and opened everything, including cabinets, and made a mess with everything. They asked ‘where’s the money’, but I didn’t have any money. My wife and children were so afraid.”

He said he reported the incident to the police, adding: “I got official paperwork saying I’d filed a complaint but nothing happened.”"

CSM: Settler extremists widen campaign against Palestinians

 Monitor reporters witnessed a shooting attack by West Bank settlers on Palestinian shepherds as an Israeli army jeep stood by. Officials and diplomats say the attacks further a campaign they’ve warned of for years: to push Palestinians off their lands.

Mohammed Al Araareh, a Bedouin shepherd who just weeks before had been pushed off his land by settler attacks, points to the valley where armed settlers clashed with another shepherd, in Rammun, West Bank, Jan. 20, 2024

• By Taylor Luck Special correspondent
• Fatima AbdulKarim Special contributor

Rammun, West Bank

First the Bedouin shepherd family spotted the truck, then the five armed men dressed in white. Then the gunfire started.

Israeli settlers, drawn to another shepherd’s flock grazing in the valley 200 yards below, fired what appeared to be M16 rifles in the air and toward the shepherd.

Only weeks before, the Al Araareh family was driven off their land and lost half their possessions. On Saturday, perched up the hill from the skirmish, it looked to them like they would have to pick up and move again – fast.... READ MORE https://www.csmonitor.com/Daily/2024/20240126/Settler-extremists-widen-campaign-against-Palestinians?cmpid=shared-twitter

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Towards #Bethlehem, Circa 1890's...#Palestine

Thanks to the marvelous Mike Hanini Odetalla for always doing what he can to remind us all of Palestine's history & beauty.

A precarious existence in the Jordan Valley

File photo of a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley after an Israeli
demolition in March 2012. (MaanImages/Eleonora Vio)

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=552669
Published yesterday (updated) 01/01/2013

AL-JIFTLIK (IRIN) -- For those who recently watched images of the Israeli bombardment in Gaza, the wide open hills of the Jordan Valley in the West Bank appear as a stark contrast.

Flocks of sheep accompanied by their herders cross the hillsides, home to some of the most fertile land in all of the occupied Palestinian territory and unrivaled even in Israel.

And yet despite the abundant land and resources, Palestinians living in the Valley are some of the poorest in the Palestinian territory, lacking even the most basic infrastructure.

The Jordan Valley is marked by a patchwork of zones in which Palestinians are allowed to live, which leave little room for manoeuvre.

"These restrictions have removed their ability to be self-sustaining. They are in an artificial humanitarian crisis; they have the capacity, the training, the education, but because of man-made restrictions, they are made vulnerable," Ramesh Rajasingham, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in oPt, told IRIN.

For a start, much of the Valley is officially out of bounds to Palestinians - 44 percent is marked as closed military zones (including so-called firing zones) and nature reserves. An additional 50 percent is controlled by Israeli settlements, regarded as illegal by many in the international community. That leaves only 6 percent for Palestinians, according to figures from Save the Children...READ MORE

A Palestinian shepherd walks with his camels on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Jenin. 

An 18-year-old Palestinian shepherd was seriously wounded by Israeli gunfire in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources have said. (AFP Photo/Saif Dahlah)

'If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed' A strip of settlements built on what was northern Bethlehem threatens to cut the city off

from its historic twin, Jerusalem

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/22/jesus-the-year-bethlehem-closed

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A Palestinian shepherd watches his flock near the Israeli settlement of Har Homa, near Bethlehem. Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA

Phoebe Greenwood, Bethlehem
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 December 2011 12.03 EST

If Joseph and Mary were making their way to Bethlehem today, the Christmas story would be a little different, says Father Ibrahim Shomali, a parish priest in the town. The couple would struggle to get into the city, let alone find a hotel room.

"If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed," says the priest of Bethlehem's Beit Jala parish. "He would either have to be born at a checkpoint or at the separation wall. Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission – or to have been tourists.

"This really is the big problem for Palestinians in Bethlehem: what will happen when they close us off completely?"

Bethlehem is the heart of Christian Palestine and it swells with pride every Christmas. Manger Square is transformed into a grotto of lights and stalls crowned by a towering Christmas tree. Strings of illuminated angels, stars and bells festoon the streets. But just a few minutes' drive to the north, the festive atmosphere stops abruptly.

A strip of Israeli settlements built on 18 sq km of what was once northern Bethlehem threatens to cut the city off from its historic twin, Jerusalem....READ MORE

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/feature-palestinians-fear-for-ancient-west-bank-water-source/

Palestinians fear for ancient West Bank water source

Bedouin Falah Hedawa herds sheep in the Rashayida area, in the desert between the West Bank town of Bethlehem and the Dead Sea, July 25, 2011. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

* Israel demolishes cisterns restored to harvest rainwater

* Old cisterns, many ancient, rehabilitated in recent years

* Israel West Bank authority says cisterns in firing zones

* Bedouin say Israel aims to drive them off land

By Tom Perry

RASHAYIDA, West Bank, July 28 (Reuters) - Hewn from rock, the cavernous cisterns which dot the desert beyond Bethlehem have for centuries harvested winter rain to provide shepherds and their flocks with water through summer.

Under a baking sun, an elderly Bedouin explains how cisterns he remembers from childhood, many of them restored to full working order in the last few years, are once again helping his goat-herding community to survive.

That, he concludes, is why the Israeli authorities who control the West Bank have demolished at least three in the area since November.

"Maybe they are doing this to make us leave. We will not leave," said Falah Hedawa, 64, sitting on cushions in his tent home pitched in the hills that slope down to the Dead Sea.

Out into the desert, a stagnant pool marked the spot where one of the cisterns, chiselled out of a hillside, had stood until its recent demolition. A mud trail on the otherwise dry ground indicated where the water inside had drained away towards a wadi, a valley which becomes a river when the rain falls.

Israel has demolished 20 rainwater collection cisterns in the West Bank in the first half of this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which monitors conditions in the Palestinian territories.

Their razing is part of a marked acceleration in demolitions of Palestinian structures...READ MORE