“They would kill us if we stayed”

Human Wrongs Watch By the Norwegian Refugee Council*

11 April 2025 — On the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a group of Israeli settlers carrying metal sticks and tools descended a rocky hill and attacked Khadija Kaabneh’s family.

 

Khadija Kaabneh looks towards her family’s third displacement site. Photo: Farah Bayadsi/NRC

The settlers stormed and destroyed the family’s tents, ransacked their belongings, and beat Khadija’s husband and sons. Fearing for her and her daughters’ safety, she fled to a nearby hill, helpless as she watched settlers attack her eldest son, Bashar.

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A couple of hours after the 1 March attack, they issued a threat. “They said they would kill us if we stayed,” recounts Khadija.

Her husband Abed al-Rahman was injured. He needed medical attention but deferred seeing a doctor for three days because he was afraid to leave his family.

For Khadija, this attack was the latest in a series of episodes that has forcibly displaced her family three times in less than 18 months.

Decades of displacement

For decades, Palestinian Bedouins from the Al-Kaabneh family lived in Wadi as-Seeq, a small community tucked in the rolling foothills east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

There, residents earned their living producing dairy products, relying on a harmonious balance between their livestock, the surrounding natural resources and grazing lands.

The families of Wadi as-Seeq have endured generations of forced displacement.

In 1948, Israeli forces expelled them from their ancestral lands in the Naqab (Negev) desert during the establishment of the state of Israel.

After being uprooted again in 1967 from the southern West Bank – where their villages were declared military zones – they eventually relocated to Wadi as-Seeq in 1995, leasing land from Palestinian owners in nearby towns. But life there offered little security.

In 1995, the Oslo II Accord carved the West Bank into three areas, leaving more than 60 per cent – designated Area C – under full Israeli military and civil control.

Wadi as-Seeq, like hundreds of other Palestinian communities, fell within this area. Residents found themselves placed under a regime that blocked construction, limited access to water and electricity, and left them exposed to growing settler violence.

Such Israeli policies have created a highly coercive environment in which Palestinians are left with no genuine choice but to leave. Displacement driven by such pressure amounts to forcible transfer – a grave breach of international humanitarian law.

Growing settler violence

Israel’s discriminatory planning regime makes it nearly impossible for Palestinians in Area C to secure building permits. As a result, communities like Wadi as-Seeq often have no choice but to build without them – leaving homes, schools and essential infrastructure at constant risk of demolition or confiscation.

Between 2012 and 2022, Israeli authorities demolished 53 structures in Wadi as-Seeq. Others, including a primary school built with European funding, remained under threat.

For years, Israeli settlers attacked and harassed the community with impunity. The violence escalated after the establishment of HaMachoch, an illegal settler outpost* nearby.

From the outpost, settlers blocked Wadi as-Seeq’s main entrance, harassed residents, attacked the primary school, and prevented access to surrounding grazing land. When community members tried to defend themselves and their homes, Israeli police detained them instead.

*An Israeli outpost is an unauthorised settlement built without government approval, often on private Palestinian land, while a settlement is a state-sanctioned Israeli community in the occupied West Bank.

Unlike government-sanctioned settlements, outposts are built without official approval, often on private Palestinian land. Both, however, are illegal under international law.

Settler violence escalated sharply after 7 October 2023 and the escalation of hostilities in Gaza. The violence reached unprecedented levels of abuse, including physical assaults, threats and sexual violence, and targeted both Wadi as-Seeq residents and solidarity activists.

Ultimately, the community had no choice but to flee for their safety in October 2023.

“Settler gangs attacked us under the protection – and with the help – of the occupation forces. They expelled us and took everything we owned, even our gold, money and homes,” says Abed al-Rahman, the community’s appointed representative. “We fled just to stay alive, and it was under the threat of the settlers’ weapons.”

The entire community of 208 people, including 66 children, fled to the nearest locations they could reach. With few options and limited space, they were forced to split into two groups.

One group relocated to the outskirts of nearby Rammun, three kilometres away, and the other to Taybeh, six kilometres away.

The experience of Wadi as-Seeq’s residents was not unique. In the wake of 7 October 2023, 1,752 Palestinians, including 856 children, were forcibly displaced across the West Bank amid a surge in settler violence and movement restrictions. Most came from Bedouin and herding communities.

Social fragmentation, stress and trauma

Khadija’s family barely escaped the October 2023 settler attack. As they fled, her 11-year-old son, Moataz, fell and was left badly bruised. They reached the outskirts of Rammun with almost nothing, cut off from the rest of their community.

“It is the feeling of defeat,” Khadija said. “I was lonely and overwhelmed. The feeling of loss is too difficult. We had everything, and we owned it. Yet suddenly, it didn’t belong to us.”

The displacement had a profound impact on the community’s wellbeing, especially among its children. After fleeing, Khadija’s ten-year-old son Mustafa began complaining of pain in his legs and pelvis.

A doctor later diagnosed it as a physical response to the emotional trauma of the settler attacks. Another time, Khadija found Moataz quietly crying as he looked through family photos from earlier, happier times in the community.

A mental health assessment carried out after the community’s forcible displacement revealed alarming signs of distress among children from Wadi as-Seeq. The psychologist reported high levels of post-traumatic stress, anxiety, adjustment disorders and depressive symptoms.

“Sometimes I feel pain in my chest,” Khadija says. “People who know us notice that we have changed. I used to be full of energy, always checking in on everyone. Now I just feel isolated. We used to live close together as a community – we’d gather often, and we felt safe. But now, it does not feel safe anymore.”

Khadija’s children’s saw their studies disrupted, and their school attendance became irregular. Aid agencies had built a primary school in Wadi as-Seeq, but after the displacement, families had to find new schools in Rammun and Taybeh, arrange transport and help their children adjust to unfamiliar learning environments.

Khadija’s husband, Abed al-Rahman, stands in front of his children and a makeshift tent on the outskirts of Rammun. Photo: Ahmad Al-Bazz/NRC

With no land for grazing, sheep belonging to forcibly displaced families eat from feeders at a displacement site in Taybeh. Photo: Ahmad Al-Bazz/NRC

“Our livestock have become a burden”

Khadija’s family is now suffering from a financial crisis as their expenses have increased while their income has dropped dramatically. Lack of grazing lands has forced them to pay high prices to purchase water and fodder for their livestock.

“Our main source of income is livestock, but now it costs us more than it brings in,” says Abed al-Rahman.

“In Wadi as-Seeq, raising animals was cheap. Grazing land was accessible, safe and open, and we had free access to water wells, so we did not need to pay for water for the animals. Now, livestock has become a burden instead of a source of income.”

Financial hardship left Khadija’s family unable to afford school fees for their six-year-old son, Izzedine, forcing them to postpone his enrolment in first grade.

Displaced again and again

Seven months after being displaced from Wadi as-Seeq, Khadija’s family was asked by the landowners to leave the site where they had taken refuge.

“We thought we would only be there temporarily, and that we would return to our homes,” says Abed al-Rahman.

The family eventually found another location on a hill at the outskirts of Rammun, where the landowners agreed to host them temporarily – and free of charge – for six months, until October 2024. But the site was remote and difficult to reach, accessible only by a rugged, rocky path, and offering no space for herding their sheep.

“In May, one of my daughters, Nadia, fainted due to the stress and exhaustion of moving,” Khadija says. “It is not easy to move over and over again.”

The site had a single large tent with some basic cooking equipment but no sanitation facilities. Family members took turns bathing while Khadija held up a blanket to give them privacy.

The tent itself was unstable, and at night, the family feared it might collapse as they slept. Eventually, they chose the open sky over the risk of injury, sleeping outdoors for safety.

In October 2024, with their six-month agreement expiring, the family was forced to moved for a third time, this time to a valley below their first displacement site.

This is state land administered by the Palestinian Authority. However, the land was not officially allocated to them, and they were only granted verbal permission to stay there.

“The land is not suitable for long-term living,” says Abed al-Rahman. “It is surrounded by wastewater flowing from nearby Palestinian villages.”

As with their previous temporary homes, there is no space to graze their flocks. The family intends to stay only through the winter before moving yet again.

Khadija’s family’s third displacement site in a valley surrounded by wastewater flowing from nearby Palestinian villages. Photo: Farah Bayadsi/NRC

An uncertain future

Nearly 18 months after their original displacement, the illegal Israeli outpost next to Wadi as-Seeq remains. After the families fled, settlers blocked the community’s entrance and destroyed homes and the school, making return impossible.

For now, the community remains in limbo: unable to safely return home and without a viable alternative.

A rocky dirt road leads to the family’s makeshift encampment, where a few small tents have been set up alongside a sheep enclosure and a wall of old tyres to offer some degree of privacy and protection.

But the most recent attack has shown that, even after repeated relocations, they are still not safe from settler violence.

They do not know what the future holds. “We are too scared to plan for the future because we do not know what could happen with the settlers,” says Abed al-Rahman.

“Enough injustice, enough displacement, enough destruction and theft of everything. We need protection and quick intervention when the settlers attack.”

As for Khadija, she still longs to return home to Wadi as-Seeq, even if only for a brief farewell visit. From where she stands, she can see the trees of her community in the distance.

“If only I could go back and say goodbye to my home,” she says with tears in her eyes. “The other day, I saw some flames rising from there and it felt as though my heart was burning instead.”

*SOURCE: Norwegian Refugee Council. Go to ORIGINAL: https://www.nrc.no/feature/2025/they-would-kill-us-if-we-stayed 2025 Human Wrongs Watch

Source: https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2025/04/14/they-would-kill-us-if-we-stayed/