The quiet erosion of Christian life in the Holy Land
0:00 Losing Ground: Christians in the Holy Land
3:32 Anti-Christian Incidents in Jerusalem are rising
8:01 Christian Palestininans are leaving faster than most
13:24 A confrontation with the Israeli army
CNN
Suleiman Ghawanmeh is tired of talking. For over 10 years, he talked himself hoarse until he realized his words could not save his community from being driven out. After his final appeal for help came to nothing, he, too, left.
“I am angry with the world… nobody listens to us… it’s as if we are not human beings,” he told CNN.
His village of Ras Ein al-Auja in the occupied West Bank has now been erased – emptied of its Palestinian residents after a years-long campaign of relentless settler harassment that has intensified over the past two years.
The ongoing violence against what was once the largest shepherding community in the West Bank increased markedly this month, forcing families to abandon their homes, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
Armed and masked settlers, many of them teenagers, descended on the Ras Ein al-Auja daily, residents and activists say, terrorizing the nearly 120 extended families – more than 800 people in total – who lived there. By the end of January, that harassment forced them all to leave.
Ghawanmeh, 44, and his family were the last to go on Sunday.
“We didn’t get displaced because a shepherd or a settler attacked us. No. The issue is bigger than that. The shepherd is a tool – a means of the occupation,” he said.
Ras Ein al-Auja is the 46th shepherding community in the West Bank to be forcibly displaced since October 7th 2023, according to B’Tselem, which calls this a form of “ethnic cleansing.”... READ MORE https://www.cnn.com/world/middleeast/palestinians-west-bank-erasure-israel