Palestinians with land deeds still face settler violence in the occupied West Bank

Taybeh Junction, Occupied West Bank – Barbed wire in front of the entrance to the Mleihat family compound makes it difficult for women, children, the elderly, and visitors to come and go. But Muhammad Mleihat, 57, says the fence is mainly intended to slow the settlers’ advance so they can be spotted. “They have bolt cutters,” he says, pointing at the fence. “They come, cut the wire, and storm in.”

Mleihat is no stranger to being forced from his home. His family was among those displaced during the 1948 Nakba – when 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland during the creation of the State of Israel.

Two years ago, he and his children were driven from Mughayyir al-Deir, a herding community in the eastern hills, by settler violence. They moved to this plot about a kilometer northwest of Taybeh Junction, where he says he holds a tabu – an official land deed – in his own name.

But in the past three years, after all Palestinian Bedouin villages east and south of the junction were forcibly evacuated, the settlers’ zone of conflict has expanded to the strip along Highway 449 – an area under joint Israeli security control and Palestinian civil administration. Previously, these areas, classified as Area B under the Oslo Accords, were considered beyond settler reach. Now, with the abandoned Bedouin lands empty, settlers have followed them here.

“The settlers chased us – the same ones from Mughayyir al-Deir,” Mleihat explains.

Local residents say the most aggressive settlers in the area are linked to Neria Ben Pazi – a settler sanctioned by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan – who spearheads most forced displacements of Palestinians from areas east of Ramallah, including alleged involvement in the displacements at Mughayyir al-Deir. Local monitors estimate Ben Pazi has now established “dozens” of outposts across the West Bank.

According to families in the area, settlers arrive at night on donkeys and all-terrain vehicles – vehicles supplied to settlers in illegal outposts through state budgets. They cut fences, drive livestock onto farmland, destroy animal feed and hay, and sever water pipes and electrical wires.

Hill-country youths – as some ideologically extreme settlers are called – carry wooden or metal clubs during daily incursions, sometimes beating and kicking residents. By day, they patrol, driving herds through Palestinian family plots, with flocks of sheep constantly grazing the olive groves next to the Mleihat family home.

Just above the Mleihat compound, a building and a small plot have been nearly abandoned by their Palestinian owner. In recent days, settlers cut the fence and brought 20 camels to graze and roam on this plot, located in the center of the Bedouin cluster south of Highway 449. According to an Israeli activist who has documented the area for years and now protects the community, the camels were borrowed from settlers at an illegal outpost in the Jordan Valley. In effect, livestock are being moved across the West Bank to bolster the settlers’ latest campaign.

“They ravaged Ein Samiya, al-Mu'arrajat, Mughayyir al-Deir, Mikhmas, Ras al-Ein al-Auja,” Mleihat remarks. “They want to finish off this place too, then keep moving.”