Out of sight, at the edge of a darkened backyard, ethnic cleansing is happening. What until a few months ago seemed like a chance string of violent incidents committed by unruly settlers, tormenting their neighbors purely out of sadism, including beating up old men and children with iron bars, is growing before our blinded eyes to monstrous dimensions. It’s no longer a coincidental string of incidents; now it’s a policy, with the government either supporting it or turning a blind eye. One can no longer ignore it or remain silent. It looks like ethnic cleansing, acts ethnic cleansing and that’s what it is.
Over the last three months I visited three communities of shepherds who’d had to in the West Bank for fear of the settlers. There were others. Three tiny hamlets gave in and were evacuated, their communities dispersed to the winds. Thousands of dunams were “cleansed,” taken over by settler thugs.
In May it was the community of Ein Samia, 200 people including children, who fled for their lives in fear of settlers in the outposts erected below the settlement of Kochav Hashahar. In July it was a community of shepherds at Khirbet Abu Widad, fleeing settlers from Havat Meitarim. This week I visited shepherds displaced from al-Baqaa, who’d fled land they had lived on for 40 years. This time it was settlers from Mitzpeh Hagit, Neveh Erez and Mitzpeh Dani who pushed them to flee. The persecution has been relentless, intensifying since the present government came to power, and it is now bearing fruit.
In order for shepherds living under biblical-age conditions, with no running water, electricity or minimal services, to leave their villages, something really dramatic has to happen. These people, tough and sunburned shepherds living a hard life, have lived in these communities for decades, born there and raising their children there. They decided one day to give up and leave, to abandon the creed of steadfastness (sumud) that was seared into Palestinian souls in 1948, in the hope it would never happen again. They all tell the same story: We couldn’t do it any longer, with the attacks, theft, invasions, threats to children, with the drones, tractors, blockades, all backed by the army. The settlers run riot, with soldiers protecting them. The IDF will never be able to claim innocence and argue that its soldiers did not take part in the growing ethnic cleansing.
It’s not by coincidence that they are all part of Bedouin shepherd communities. They are the pilot for the large transfer project. This is the trial population ahead of the second Nakba, taking shape in the minds of more Israelis than one would imagine, as a “final solution” to the “Palestinian problem.” If these terms sound chilling, they are.
The settlers chose shepherd communities as a pilot, since they are at the bottom of the Palestinian food chain. They are the weakest link, the most defenseless one. They have no one to turn to, not the police, not the army, not the Palestinian Authority. They never established a resistance force, even the puniest one, as the refugee camps have done.
Their entire world revolves around tending their flocks and contending with the harsh conditions of their lives, including obtaining water, sowing wheat, staying warm in the winter, sending their kids to a distant school. No one comes to defend them, no one is interested in their fate except for a few exceptional Israelis. The settlers can lord it overthese weakest of the weak. Here is where they try out their methods ahead of the real thing.
But the real thing is already upon us. Never before, in all the years of the occupation, has there been a Palestinian abandonment of villages in such proportions. It’s true that in comparison to the 3 million residents of the West Bank, these are but drops in the bucket. But these are foreboding drops, heralding the future. To expel all of them you need an Armageddon. To cleanse the Jordan Valley, the southern Hebron hills and the core area around West Bank settlements, all you need is a few hundred thugs who will torment their residents relentlessly. This is the beginning of a real ethnic cleansing. You’ve been warned.