Ras Ain al-Auja, the latest Palestinian village in the West Bank wiped off the map by Israel
Palestinian Bedouin residents of Ras Ain al-Auja dismantle their homes as Israeli settlers forcibly expel them from their lands, January 2026
Zena al-Tahhan reports in Mondoweiss on 14 January 2026:
They had not yet finished dismantling their homes and packing their belongings onto trucks before Israeli shepherds — many of them armed — rolled in between homes with hundreds of sheep, taking over the blooming valley of Ras Ain al-Auja.
Since Saturday, dozens of Palestinian families in the village, which sits north of the city of Jericho in the occupied West Bank, have been forcibly transferred from the lands they’ve lived on for generations amid record levels of state-backed settler violence and land theft.
Ras Ain al-Auja was once one of the largest Palestinian Bedouin villages in the entire West Bank, comprising 1,200 residents. 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. Now, most of the 120 families in Ras Ain al-Auja have also been driven out.
“We’ve been suffering for over two years. We’ve had enough,” Salameh Mahmoud Salameh, the village spokesperson, told Mondoweiss from the village. “ We’ve been living under a settler siege. We’ve reached a point where if your son is sick, you can’t take him to the doctor.”
As he packed his belongings, Salameh described how he and his family had been isolated from the rest of the village and denied access to their water supplies and most other basic supplies. “We can’t stay anymore. We’re afraid for our children and our families. We’re afraid they might burn our village,” he said.
“We feel that 1948 and 1967 are recurring, and that we’re heading toward an unknown fate,” Salameh added, referencing the mass expulsions of Palestinians during those years. The scene in Ras Ain al-Auja is dominated by heartbreak and raw indignation. Young and old work side by side, dismantling their own lives, salvaging whatever they can carry as their existence is erased in real time.
Ras Ain al-Auja has experienced a marked increase in settler encroachment on the lives of its residents over the past two years, escalating into a daily reality as armed and masked settlers descend on the village night after night, raiding homes, beating residents, stealing sheep, and terrorizing families. Between August 2024 and May 2025, more than 2,200 sheep were taken in at least five attacks. About 1,500 were stolen in a single night.
“Our homes, our land, our sheep are gone. Our children are terrorized for life,” Muhammad Hreizat, a resident facing displacement, told Mondoweiss. “For over a week, we have been demolishing our homes with our own hands. This is not voluntary. The settlers forced us. Netanyahu’s government forced us.”