Emptiness. Sorrow. The madafeh, indeed the whole village, feels empty without Muhammad. Just last week we were sitting with him, drinking tea, chatting,devouring the cake he had bought for us. We took for granted his gracious manner, his steadiness, his gentle nature. He seemed as solid as the desert rocks, as the rolling waves of the hills. He was killed earlier this week in a car crash near Nablus; his car collided with a huge truck, and he died instantly. This man who survived years of settler violence and harassment, the theft of his herd, the never-ending threats from soldiers and police, died in broad daylight on the road.

Naif, his closest companion, tries bravely to comfort us and, no doubt, himself. “We were always together, we did everything together, we shared our lives, everything we had.” Tonight he leads us to the Tent of Mourning, to pay our respects. We feel orphaned, like Muhammad’s sons and daughters. Efrat goes into the women’s quarters, the rest of us file pas the line of mourning relatives, shaking each man’s hand. I recite the Quranic formula for this moment: Inna li-llah wa-inna ilayhi rāji‘ūn, “We belong to Allah and to Him we return.” And then: Al-baqīa fi ḥayātak, “May the days he could have lived be added to your life.”  The family knows us and welcomes us. We sit among them, sometimes in silence; somehow we manage to tell them how much he meant to us, how he made us feel safe and at home, how generous he was. I can’t help thinking that somewhere, a few miles from here, there must be some Jewish family mourning a loss, just like these people. How alike we are, and how afraid.

Before this visit we have an ugly moment with the horrible settlers. They are trying to build their new outpost inside Ras al-‘Ain, as they did successfully a week ago in Magha’ir a-Dir in the central West Bank. Magha’ir a-Dir is no more; the villagers could no longer bear the endless violence. Now the settlers are repeating the trick. We go to inspect the large stretch of land they have already usurped, between the compounds of Abu Salama and Musa. They’ve brought a plough and ploughed a strip, thereby claiming ownership. The plough is sitting there amidst the rocks. The Civil Administration issued a stop-work order, ostensibly because the legal ownership of the plot in question is disputed. Apparently it is privately owned Palestinian land, thus in theory immune even to state-driven theft; but there are complications. Meanwhile, the settlers are defying the Civil Administration. It is very likely that soon they will have their noxious outpost, and the hundreds of Palestinians in Ras al-‘Ain may not survive in their homes.

A car pulls up, and four settlers get out. Believe me, they are not a pretty sight. Unkempt, arrogant, scornful, hateful, the Lords of the Land, they stride up and down the plowed furrow. They’re photographing us, and we are photographing them:  two utterly opposed worlds, two incompatible visions of what it means to be human, are taking pictures of each other. Their driver, maybe a little older than the others, asks me bitterly: “What are you doing here (on my land)?” I know there’s no point whatsoever in answering, but still I say, unthinking, “The question is what you are doing here on Palestinian land.” He makes a face. The menace is plain to see. And there is something concrete and immediate right at this spot: the night before these same settlers cut the cables that carry electric power to the village. The sliced cables were restored by a skilled technician from the village, and the settlers aren’t happy. I think they are only happy when they torture others. They inspect the reinstated cables; they are definitely disappointed at what has happened to their handiwork. What this means is that they will come back and cut them again, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow—and so on for all eternity, or until the people of Ras al-Ain are gone.

So Michal and I take a shift watching over the cables from 10:00 to midnight. A young man of Abu Salama’s family tells us we have only to keep our eyes on the hill where the outpost lies; if you see lights coming down that hill, it means they’re coming for the cables, or something worse. Night in the desert: dogs barking, mules braying, the roosters, unaware that they are supposed to wait for dawn, are crowing.  At some point a bright light, maybe a headlight, flashes from the outpost in our direction. We tense up. Are they going to attack us? But the light isn’t moving, and by midnight we feel it’s safe enough for us to go back to the Madafeh, as our Palestinian host recommends. Michal says it’s like a horror film played very slowly so as to maximize the threat.

The morning shift will have to deal with the cable problem. But the real point is that the remorseless crime of theft followed by violent expulsion is already unfolding. Maybe we can stop them at this point or that one, maybe we can ensure the village has water, maybe we can draw the case out in the courts and in the media, maybe God will intervene, but the deadly steamroller of the occupation/annexation is in motion. Things are not looking good.  We need to be here, day and night, in Ras al-‘Ain, to face the evil straight on, without flinching. We owe that, at least, to Muhammad.

Here are a few more words about our friend: Muhammad was a gentle, kind-hearted, generous man who had survived years of settler harassment and violence. We will cherish the memories of so many nights chatting with him in the Madafeh, or at dawn. He rarely slept: he guarded his home and sheep throughout the night from the two jackals and one wolf who were known to invade the village, not to mention the far more dangerous human jackals from the settlements. He used to sleep for an hour or two midday. Just last week he brought us a cake that he had bought for us in Auja, and he was always offering sweet Bedouin tea. His life was not easy. Margaret’s photographs of him in the Madafeh capture his spirit very well. I can still see him happy when he was holding a new-born lamb in his arms. He was a man of peace.

Text: David Shulman © 2025. Photographs as credited, © 2025