Ras Ain el Awja, Palestinian a Bedouin village in the southern Jordan Valley, was home to Jamila Rashid and her family for decades. However, at the beginning of January they were forced to leave.
"Harassment by Israeli settlers has become unbearable," says Rashid, a young mother, as she leans against the metal door of her house in Ras Ein el Auja in the occupied West Bank, writes DW.
There were several suitcases and other things in the corner of the room. "There is no security anymore. We have been suffering for three years, but now the provocations have increased," Rashid told DW, talking about how the settlers entered their home. "Yesterday, honestly, they came into our kitchen. The kids were so scared."
Rise in immigrant violence
Last year saw an increase in settler violence against Palestinians and their property in the occupied territories West coast. Settler attacks have intensified since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war.
The Israeli military and the Shin Bet internal security agency said the number of attacks by extremist Israeli settlers on Palestinians and Israeli forces increased by 27 percent in 2025 compared to the previous year.
And from January 2023, the Office UN The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has documented the cases of more than 700 Palestinian families whose displacement is linked to settler violence in the West Bank.
Among them were primarily the Bedouin and herding communities in Area C, which makes up 60 percent of the West Bank and is under complete Israeli control.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, at least 44 communities have been completely expelled since October 2023.
How Palestinians are expelled
The situation in Ras Ein el Auja began to deteriorate in late December 2025, when Israeli settlers established an illegal foothold inside the village. They plowed the land with tractors and blocked the road leading to one part of the community.
Resident Salameh Kabna testified about several attacks by settlers and attempts to get closer to the community in recent years. But when settlers set up a small outpost just a few tens of meters from his home and family, any remaining sense of security quickly disappeared.
"They stopped us from using the road and blocked the water tanks," Kabna said, looking toward a nearby outpost, where two settlers stood with their donkey. "At night, several of them approached our living space. The children were terrified," he says.
An estimated 130 people from several large families were forced to remove their homes and leave the village earlier this month due to constant attacks by settlers. Rashid and her young family will now join them.
"This is humiliating, it's painful," she said. "I mean, is there anything worse than destroying your own house with your own hands? And we don't even know where we're going," Rashid said.
Many others were also packing up on that cold, sunny, winter day in the Jordan Valley. Donkeys, goats, and sheep could be heard around.
The animals are the main source of income for the people in the village, but most were locked in their pens for weeks as it became unsafe to let them graze. Now some were loaded into pickup trucks and driven away with their belongings, while young men from nearby Ramallah helped the villagers dismantle the pens and houses.
Another villager, Mohammed Abu Fadi, watched the event with grim disbelief, still unsure whether to leave or stay. "Every day and every night they come with horses, they mistreat. It all affects children, animals, even birds — it's not human behavior," he said.
Harassment pattern
The situation in Ras Ein el-Awja — which is surrounded by several illegal settlements and outposts — is not isolated.
The pattern was repeated in many other Palestinian communities, such as nearby Muarajat and Mugajir al-Deir. There too, settlers set up outposts in the center of the villages, stepped up attacks, and quickly forced people to leave the villages.
According to the anti-settlement organization Peace Now, there are more than 149 Israeli settlements in the West Bank, as well as 224 small unauthorized outposts and farms.
The settlements are illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this. Settlement expansion has been promoted by Israeli governments since they seized and occupied the West Bank in the 1967 war.
Under the current hard-line government, settlers have been appointed to high positions in government. Recently, the government announced the establishment or legalization of 19 new settlements, as well as the implementation of a controversial plan known as E1, which would split the West Bank in two.
Most of the international community, including Germany, considers the growing number of settlements the main obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
"Protective presence"
In Ras Ein el-Awja, a young Israeli settler led his flock of sheep through a Palestinian village, closely followed by international and Israeli activists from the so-called “protective presence groups.”
These are people who stay in the village 24 hours a day, every day, to protect the community from attacks by settlers. Some stay with families near their homes.
From their base on a small hill in the village, the activists monitor the movements of the settlers. But they have had to admit that there is little they can do.
"Right now we can only protect them (Palestinians) while they pack and help them leave this place safely," Ben Porat, an activist with the anti-settlement NGO Looking the Occupation in the Eye, told DW Neta.
In recent days, she said, Israeli settlers have brought several flocks of sheep and goats into the village. "There are dozens of settlers in the village at any given time, harassing, stealing, beating, intimidating, filming houses, riding horses in the yards. The residents can't sleep, they can't rest, they have to be constantly on guard. Many can't live like this and have decided to leave," she explained.
What is the Israeli government doing about this?
Palestinians and activists claim that the Israeli government is not preventing these attacks and that there is almost no accountability for the perpetrators.
Israeli activist Amir Pansky described the situation in Ras Ein el-Awja as "heartbreaking," as he had known the families in the village for years.
"The State of Israel, the regional municipality, they carry out this (occupation) through intermediaries, these children, shepherds, who harass and attack the community here all night, all day. They are supported by the army, the police, the state and the authorities in the West Bank," Pansky believes.
In March 2025, Israeli settlers stole herds of sheep and goats from several farmers in the village during the night, seriously injuring and killing some of the animals before taking them to an illegal agricultural outpost. Despite providing proof of ownership of the animals, requests to the police and military remained unanswered.
When asked by DW what they are doing to protect the villagers, the Israeli army said that they have recently increased the presence of soldiers and that they are aware of the incidents.
"Soldiers enter the area in accordance with calls and operational needs, with the aim of preventing clashes between the population and maintaining order and security in the area," the army said, adding that "soldiers who come across incidents of violations of the law by Israeli citizens or acts directed against Palestinians or their property must intervene and, if necessary, detain or arrest the suspects until the police arrive on the scene."
In Ras Ein el Auji, Rashid, Kabna and other relatives finally decided to leave and take the families to safety.
Within a day, both the inhabitants and their animals disappeared from one side of the village. Now only the remains of the huts are evidence that people lived there for years.
