As only a few families continue to resist in Ras Ein al-Auja, Israel attempts to kill centuries-old Bedouin traditions.
On January 19, at least 77 Palestinian Bedouin and herding households, comprising 375 people were forced to dismantle their homes in the Ras Ein al-Auja community, in Jericho governorate, in the occupied West Bank, following intensified attacks and threats by Israeli settler militias. This displacement followed the forced displacement of 21 families on January 8, after a series of settler attacks that included the physical attacks, cutting of solar electricity cables, and destruction of land.
The village was one of the last Palestinian herding communities in this part of the Jordan Valley, but now:
- The herders’ sheep have gone as most of them have been stolen or poisoned by settlers or sold off by villagers under pressure.
- Knowing these communities rely on their animals for livelihood, settler militias also ban Palestinians from grazing their animal flocks by building fences, setting outposts, and direct attacks.
- Their water has been cut off despite the abundance of water in the Ras Ein spring, which has been declared off-limits by the nearby settlers.
- Israel bans these communities from connecting to the electricity grid, and even when they build solar panels, settler militias destroy them.
Ein al-Auja was once one of the largest Palestinian Bedouin villages in the entire West Bank, comprising 1,200 residents. Since the start of this year, about 450 of the 650 Palestinian inhabitants of Ras Ein al-Auja have fled their homes because of violence by Israeli settlers. 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. This rapid displacement of hundreds of people marks the largest expulsion from a single Bedouin community as a result of Israeli settler violence since the Nakba in 1948.
The Bedouin families are descendants of refugees forced out of the Naqab in 1948.
The Palestinian community of Ras Ein Al-Auja has long held firm in the face of Israel’s violence and settler-colonialism. However, Israel’s continuing colonial policy, seen in other now-displaced Bedouin communities like nearby Mu’arrajat and Maghayer Al-Dir, some of whose inhabitants fled to Ras Ein al-Auja. At the beginning of the year settlers began erecting outposts directly next to Palestinian homes, right in the middle of the community.
Over 60 Palestinian communities were completely expelled and erased since the genocide.
Over 12000 Palestinian Bedouin have been expelled by Israeli attacks since 2023.
Today, Ras Ein Al-Auja is surrounded by settlements and outposts on all sides: to the north, the settlement of Yitav and the Auja Farm outpost; to the west, uphill, the Baladim outposts near Kokhav HaShahar settlement; to the south, the outpost of radical settler Zohar Sabah; and to the east, Einot Kedem. In August 2025, settlers also erected an outpost in Ras Ein Al-Auja and took over homes abandoned by families who lived on the outskirts of the village.
This recent explosion of settler outposts is part of Israel’s colonial policy of shepherding outposts, where each of these outposts mimics the Bedouins’ way of life but with settlers’ herding grazing flocks, which are mostly stolen from Palestinians).
Between August 2024 and May 2025, settlers stole more than 2,200 sheep in at least five attacks. About 1,500 were stolen in a single night.
These attacks are typically carried out by a single armed Israeli settler supported by several armed teenagers often funnelled in by government-funded programmes.
Palestinian families have barricaded themselves inside their houses, to resist the settlers who now routinely graze their flocks just outside Palestinian homes.
In June 2024, the Israeli military declared 12,000 dunams of Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley (where Ras Ein 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.
Israel directly controls at least 90 percent of the Jordan Valley.
Israel is more brutal and criminal than ever before.
But, Israel is also politically and economically more isolated than ever before.
This is the moment to stop its genocide, apartheid, illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing.
Keep up and escalate pressure to stop complicity!
Don’t normalize Israel’s crimes!
Escalate BDS now.