‘The [ISRAELI] settlers brought the violence’: the ethnic cleansing of a West Bank village... Ras ‘Ein al ‘Auja is a small community of about 135 families – and the only one remaining in this part of the Jordan valley

 Israeli settler shepherd, escorted by a white truck with Israeli soldiers.

Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum in Ras 'Ein al 'Auja, West Bank

Wed 14 Jan 2026 01.00 EST

 

Five decades in the south Jordan valley were ending in a day, and Mahmoud Eshaq struggled to hold back his tears. The 55-year-old had not cried since he was a boy, but as he dismantled the family home and prepared to flee the village where his whole life had played out, he was overwhelmed by grief.

While Eshaq’s children loaded mattresses, a fridge, sacks of flour and suitcases of clothes into a truck, masked soldiers escorted a teenage Israeli shepherd down the main village road, where he posed for photos on his donkey, flashing a V sign.

The ethnic cleansing of Ras ‘Ein al ‘Auja was underway, and the men and boys who made life untenable for Palestinians here had come to celebrate.

Eshaq’s home, a community of about 135 families, was the largest and most established of the Bedouin villages dotted on hillsides in this part of the Jordan valley.

By the start of this year, it was also the only one left. A campaign of intensifying settler violence – arson, mass theft, beatings, intimidation and destruction of property – forced out village after village until their last remaining neighbours, in nearby Mu’arrajat, fled in July.

Israeli settlers now have full control of more than 250 sq km (100 sq miles) of land in this part of the occupied West Bank, where a decade ago only Bedouin herds grazed, said Dror Etkes, founder of settlement monitoring group Kerem Navot.

Palestinians have been forced out of this area, which the international community has earmarked as part of their future state.

“We were living here peacefully, but they made us into an enemy. The settlers brought the violence,” Eshaq said. “I haven’t cried my whole life, but this morning I was crying. This is a terrible day for us.”

He grew up gazing across the Jordan river at mountains rising sharply toward white hilltop towns, and splashing in the wadi where his children and grandchildren later played. At night the clear desert skies are crowded with stars.

The bedouin families who live there are descendants of refugees forced out of the Naqab, or Negev, in what is now Israel, in 1948... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/14/settlers-violence-ethnic-cleansing-west-bank-village

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