When Israel began to bomb Gaza on October 7, 2023, Fayez Atil felt her community in occupied West Bank would soon also be attacked.
Atil is from the Palestinian village of Zanuta, a traditional farming community in the Jordan valley.
The settlers of the illegal Israeli colonies had harassed and attacked his village for years. However, violence has increased sharply after Israel has launched what many describe as a “genocidal” war against Gaza.
“It suddenly looked like a war,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune by phone.
“Every day and every evening, illegal settlers tried to steal our sheep or vandalize our village by destroying our properties and cars,” added the 45 -year -old man.
The 250 inhabitants of Zanuta have gradually left their village – and their lifestyle – due to the constant attacks and harassment of the colonists.
Atil packed his personal effects and left with his family after Israeli settlers beat a 77 -year -old Palestinian shepherd at the end of October 2024.
“They beat the old man, his wife and his children,” said Atil. “It was the first time that we have seen this level of aggression of the settlers.”
Easy targets
The villagers of Zanuta are one of the 46 Palestinian Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank expelled from their land by Israeli settlers supported by the State since October 7, 2023, according to Al-Haq, a Palestinian non-profit organization.
“What is happening (to Bedouin communities) is not just a question of violent and radical settlers. This is the violence of the state, “said Shai Parnes, spokesperson for the Israeli Human Rights Group B’tselem.
At the start of the War of Israel against Gaza, Israel called thousands of reservists who served in the West Bank to fight in Gaza and replaced them with “extremist settlers,” said Parnes.
“The settlers … suddenly obtained arms, ammunition and military uniforms (after October 7),” Parnes told Tel Aviv Tribune.
These settlers suddenly possessed the legal power to kill and arrest the Palestinians.
All expulsions have occurred in zone C, which is not populated and rich in agricultural resources.
Including 60% of the occupied West Bank, it is the largest of the three areas created in the West Bank within the framework of the 1993 Oslo agreements between the leaders of Palestinians and Israelis of 1993.
The Oslo agreements aimed to ostensibly create a Palestinian state in the West Bank alongside Israel.
But in the past 32 years, the size of the illegal Israeli colonies has increased regularly, their population from around 200,000 to more than 750,000.
Zone C is also under the total control of the Israeli army, which facilitates the colonists – supported by soldiers – to surround the communities of vulnerable Palestinian herds and expel them from their land, say Palestinian and Israeli groups for the defense of human rights.
This differs from zone A, which is technically under the total control of the Palestinian authority, even if the Israeli troops have always raid it, while zone B is under the joint control of the AP and the Israeli army.
‘A racist system’
Even the Palestinian Bedouins who are citizens of Israel are being expelled from their lands, say human rights groups and activists.
About 120,000 Palestinians live in “unrecognized villages” in the Naqab desert.
These are descendants of Palestinians who managed to stay on their land during the Nakba, when the Zionist militias cleaned ethnically cleaned some 750,000 Palestinians to make way for the statement of Israel in 1948.
The Israeli government insists that the Bedouin communities of “unrecognized” villages should simply move to cities, but that would break their link with the earth and threaten their lifestyle as an assembly.
Most Bedouin communities have retained their right to stay on their land. However, Israel has long said that Bedouins are nomads who never really settle in the same place.
However, Khalil Alamour, a chief of the Bedouins of the village of Khan al-Sira, explains that the Bedouins stopped migrating more than two centuries ago, and they still return to their land after having migrated seasonally to seek food for their cattle.
“The Bedouins are glued to our land. We are an indigenous community … We cannot simply be returned to another place,” he said.
But Israel refused to provide services to “unrecognized villages”, explaining rather the inhabitants of their homes and confiscating their land, said Alamour.
In November 2024, Israeli police finished the demolition of Umm al-Hiran, even if the Bedouin inhabitants had agreed to live alongside the Jewish settlers, as they said in Tel Aviv Tribune in February 2024.
“Violence against it is part of a racist policy against all Bedouins and against the Palestinian community more generally. And the Bedouins are part of the Palestinian community,” Alamour told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Legal laundering
Many Herder communities in the West Bank have been uprooted several times since the Nakba.
Abu Bashar, a Palestinian Mokhtar (mayor) of Wadi al-Seeq, said that his community had been uprooted four times since Israel was born.
The most recent incident occurred only a few days after October 7, when Israeli settlers stormed the community and began to terrorize the inhabitants.
About 187 people – 45 to 50 families – fled on foot, walking for hours until they reach Ramon Village, where they have stayed so far.
“After October 7, the settlers became crazy. They surrounded our village and they came with the army, which protected them and expelled us from our village,” said Abu Bashar in Tel Aviv Tribune.
“We are now living in tents and trees in terrible circumstances in Ramon,” he said.
Over the past two years, the villagers of Wadi al-Seeq and Zanuta have filed prosecution with the Israeli Supreme Court.
Critics say that going through the Israeli courts – which do not have jurisdiction over occupied lands, according to international law – actually legitimately legitimizes the occupation of Israel.
According to human rights groups, the Supreme Court of Israel played a key role in the legitimization of policies that violate Palestinian rights, such as the green of the demolition of Palestinian houses and whole villages.
“The Supreme Court is another mechanism used to whiten the Israeli occupation,” said by B’tselem.
No other appeal
Despite the historical role of the Supreme Court, several Palestinian Bedouin communities have filed business with it.
Qamar Mashraki, a Palestinian lawyer representing Zanuta, as well as other Bedouin communities expelled from their land since October 7, have won two cases so far.
In January 2024, the inhabitants of Zanuta and Umm Dharit were informed that they had the legal right to return to their land.
“We need to exploit all the tools that we (as Palestinians),” Mashraki told Tel Aviv Tribune.
But the Israeli settlers attacked families of Zanuta when they tried to return, preventing the community from rebuilding the houses and listening to their animals, pushing a lot to flee in September 2024.
With the help of Mashraki, the inhabitants of Zanuta have filed a second request for justice which required that the Israeli authorities protect the Israeli colonist community.
Last month, the court rendered a decision that the army and the police had to protect the people of Zanuta, said Atil. He added that families feel relatively safe to try to return to Zanuta.
Dozens of other Bedouin communities that have been driven out of their land do not feel so lucky.
Many fear losing their land and their way of life, even if they launch a legal battle.
Abu Bashar, from Wadi al-Seeq, said his community is still waiting for the Supreme Court to decide if they could return to their land.
Even if he can legally return, he worries the colonists will again attack his community.
“The colonists have removed us everything: our houses, our tractors, our water supply and even our food,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“We are as a seat.”