Israel's Systematic Dispossession of West Bank Bedouin Enters Fourth Year as Settler Outposts Expand

Three years after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war on Gaza, Palestinian Bedouin communities across the occupied West Bank are confronting what rights advocates describe as an accelerating campaign of forced displacement, land seizure, and settler violence. The pattern, documented across multiple communities east of Ramallah and in the central Jordan Valley, has left thousands of Palestinians homeless, stripped of their livelihoods, and confined to shrinking parcels of land.

In the village of al-Awsaj, about 25 families from the al-Muarrajat Bedouin community now live on a rocky, dust-covered ridge after being driven from their original encampments. Among them is Alia Mleihat, 29, who was displaced in July 2025 and now resides in a tent a few kilometres from her former home. She recalls the settlers from the Netzah Harel outpost, established in 2023 on private Palestinian land, as central figures in the campaign against her community. According to Mleihat, those settlers participated in every attack carried out on families and confiscated sheep, all while operating under the protection of Israeli police and military forces.

The outpost Mleihat describes was recently renamed Metzoke Eretz and elevated to official settlement status during a September 23 inauguration ceremony attended by Israeli ministers and lawmakers. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich used the occasion to praise the settler pioneers who first occupied the site, describing their approach as a replicable method: establish a farm, seize the land, prepare it, transform it into a community, then move to the next location. Smotrich framed these actions not as real estate ventures but as expressions of Zionism.

Dror Etkes, founder of the Israeli monitoring group Kerem Navot, said Smotrich's description of the method was accurate but incomplete. Etkes noted that political discourse consistently omits the chapter on Palestinian expulsion, suggesting that Israeli politicians avoid explicit references to displacement to evade potential scrutiny from international criminal courts. He added that they want it to happen, they know it happens, and they let it happen.

The legalisation of Metzoke Eretz is not an isolated case. Haaretz reported that it is one of 19 outposts that the Netanyahu government has formally legalised after nearby Palestinian residents were violently expelled. These outposts, illegal even under Israeli law prior to their regularisation, have served as staging grounds for settler attacks and land confiscation across the West Bank.

The human cost is visible in the daily lives of families like that of Jamal Mleihat, Alia's 45-year-old uncle. Sitting with eight relatives in a bare concrete-block house in al-Awsaj, his daughter Sewar on his lap, Jamal described life before October 7, 2023, as vastly better. His family had access to healthcare, a school, and water within their encampment. They moved freely across grazing lands without harassment. Since the war in Gaza began, he said, Israeli raids on the West Bank have intensified, while settlers have operated with near-total impunity.

Muhammad Ghawanmeh, who lives on a slope below Jamal's shelter with his wife and seven children, has seen his circumstances deteriorate dramatically. His toilet no longer functions, he relies on water tanks, and he has almost no electricity. The rocky track leading to the Mleihats' area is too steep for vehicles. After recent settler attacks, he built a fence around his home and now endures constant drone surveillance from settlers. His flock has dwindled from roughly 300 sheep to about 100, which he must feed with purchased fodder because grazing on the surrounding land is largely prohibited by settlers and the Israeli army.

Ghawanmeh originally hails from Ras Ein al-Auja, once the largest Bedouin community in the central Jordan Valley. In October 2023, humanitarian coordinators told Al Jazeera that the village's displacement was unlikely, given its size and established infrastructure. Yet more than 600 residents were ultimately expelled following repeated attacks by settlers from four surrounding outposts, marking the largest single-community expulsion of Bedouins in the past three years.

Reflecting on the transformation of his life, Ghawanmeh recalled a childhood when the land and water were open and his family could graze sheep 10 to 15 kilometres away before returning home. Today, he said, they cannot venture 500 metres from their house. The restrictions have severed the community from its traditional pastoral economy and forced families into aid-dependent subsistence.

The broader context of these displacements is a systematic policy that Etkes and other observers say is designed to make Palestinian life in large swathes of the West Bank untenable. The establishment of farms that evolve into outposts and then into recognised settlements creates facts on the ground that progressively shrink the space available to Palestinian communities. Each new settlement outpost serves as a node for further land confiscation, military restrictions, and settler violence, driving neighbouring Palestinians to abandon their homes.

The timing of the Metzoke Eretz inauguration, coming weeks before Israel's parliamentary elections, underscores the political incentives driving settlement expansion. Ministers and lawmakers gathered on the hilltop to celebrate the settlement's upgrade, signalling to settler constituencies that the government remains committed to the project of Jewish sovereignty over the entire West Bank. For Palestinians, however, the ceremony represented another chapter in a dispossession process that has accelerated dramatically over the past three years.

International legal experts note that the transfer of an occupying power's civilian population into occupied territory constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The legalisation of outposts built on private Palestinian land further violates the Fourth Geneva Convention's prohibition on confiscation of private property in occupied territories. Despite these prohibitions, the pace of settlement expansion has increased, and no Israeli official has faced accountability at the international level for the displacement of Palestinian communities.

For the families in al-Awsaj and the remnants of al-Muarrajat, the future remains uncertain. Many live in tents or unfinished concrete structures, dependent on humanitarian assistance and vulnerable to further settler attacks. The children who once attended school in their home encampments now face long journeys or no education at all. Pastoral livelihoods that sustained these communities for generations have been reduced to a fraction of their former scale.

Alia Mleihat's account encapsulates the loss that defines this period. She and her neighbours remember the settlers who took part in attacks on their families and seized their sheep. They remember the protection that Israeli forces provided to those settlers. And they remember the life they once had, before the outposts came and the displacements began. Now, three years into what observers describe as a mass dispossession, they wonder whether anything will remain of their communities or their way of life.