Israel has a master plan to relocate thousands of Palestinian Bedouins to a giant ghetto
Abu Nayef al-Jahhalin, 71, whose Bedouin community in Jabal al-Baba is threatened with forcible displacement, May 2026
Shatha Hammad reports in Mondoweiss on 21 May 2026:
Salem al-Jahalin,73, also known as Abu Nayef, circles his home in the Jabal al-Baba Bedouin community outside the town of al-Aizariya, east of Jerusalem. His eyes scan the surrounding terrain as far as he can see, bracing for any incursion by the Israeli army. This is the fourth time the military has threatened to demolish his home, delivering, once again, a notice informing him that his land had been claimed by one of the largest settlement blocs in the West Bank: “Your home is built on the lands of Ma’ale Adumim.”
Abu Nayef’s cup of tea goes cold before he gets a chance to sip it, his mind occupied by the uncertain fate that stalks him, as it does all the Bedouin around Jerusalem. His fingers roll a new cigarette as he tries to light it, raindrops hitting it once, the wind extinguishing it the next. “Every time they demolish, we rebuild,” Abu Nayef says. “Where would we go? They want to displace us from the land, but it’s impossible — we’ll die before we leave.”
Salem’s situation is similar to that of every Palestinian Bedouin living in the Jerusalem wilderness — locally known as the badiya of Jerusalem, a vast expanse of semi-arid plains and rolling hills that Bedouin communities have called home for generations. These communities now stand as the last barrier against the E1 settlement project, a long-halted colonization plan that aims to seize a strategic tract of land at the node separating the northern West Bank from the south, and which also encompasses the area Israel calls “Greater Jerusalem.”
Jabal al-Baba is one of 46 Bedouin communities scattered across the badiya, stretching across the steppe to the Dead Sea. Together they form a large Palestinian population bloc east of the city, alongside the four Palestinian towns of Abu Dis, al-Aizariya, Za’im, and al-Sawahra. Although an exact estimate of the total number of people in these 46 communities is unavailable today, in 2017 the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) put the number at 8,174.