Dozens of Palestinian Bedouin families in the West Bank flee Israeli violence
According to media reports, under the protection of Israeli forces, at least 50 Palestinian families from Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank have fled their homes.
Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that 30 Palestinian families were forcibly displaced from the Arab Mleihat Bedouin community in northwestern Jericho on Friday morning.
Before forced displacement, the community was home to 85 families, with about 500 people.
The Palestinian Rights Group, the al-baidar group for the defense of Bedouin rights, said the families were forced to leave after their efforts “without any support.” Since Israel’s West Bank, illegal settlement attacks by Israeli troops and Israelis exploded throughout the occupied West Bank The war in Gaza Beginning on October 7, 2023.
Alia Mleihat told WAFA that her family was forced to flee to the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp south of Jericho, after armed settlers threatened her and other families with guns.
Additionally, 50-year-old father from the community, Mahmoud Mleihat, told Reuters that they could no longer accept it and therefore decided to leave.
“The settlers armed and attacked us, [Israeli] Military protection of them. We can’t do anything to stop them,” he said.
Hassan Mleihat, director of the AL-Baidar organization, said that families in the community began to demolish tents after the ongoing provocation and attacks by Israeli settlers and the army.
Video tapes posted on social media and verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agents showed trucks full of cars driving out of the area at night.
Hassan told WAFA that the attacks also threaten to erase the community and “open the way for illegal colonial expansion.”
“We want to protect our children”
Israeli human rights organization B’tSelem has documented the repeated targets of Israeli settlers against Palestinians in Mu’arrajat near Jericho, where Mleihat tribes live.
In 2024, settlers of the armed club stormed into a Palestinian school, while in 2023, armed settlers blocked the path of vehicles carrying Palestinians, some shooting into the air and others throwing stones on the vehicles.
“We wanted to protect our children and we decided to leave,” Mahmoud said, describing it as a great injustice.
Mahmoud said he has lived in the community since he was 10 years old.
Alia Mleihat told Reuters that the Bedouin community, which had lived there for 40 years, will now be scattered in different parts of the Jordan Valley, including nearby Jericho.
“People used their own hands to tear off their homes and left this village they had for decades, and it was a place to build their dreams,” she said.
Nakba means “disaster” in Arabic, which refers to the thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes during the birth of the State of Israel in 1948.
Israel’s military has not commented on the settler harassment faced by Bedouin families or families leaving their communities.
When asked about violence in the occupied West Bank, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told reporters on Monday that any civilian violence is unacceptable and that individuals should not take the law into their own hands.
Militants say that Israeli settlement expansion has accelerated in recent years, replacing Palestinians, who have remained under military occupation since Israel captured Israel. The occupied West Bank In the 1967 war.
Most countries consider Israeli settlements illegal and violate the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit settlement of civilians on occupied lands.
