David:

I’m sorry to say that these recent blog reports keep turning into obituaries, including the loss of the lovely village of Mu‘arrajat (but see below). This is life in the Occupation. People, Palestinians, are killed routinely, and with total impunity, by the settlers. As Awdah himself said in an interview two weeks before he was murdered, “The life here is not a life anymore.

I wish I had known him better. The last time I saw him, I think, was in the early months of the war when we brought food and clothing to Umm al-Khair. He sat with us and other friends that night, and as always he was witty and inspiring and cheerful. Awdah was an English teacher in the school. He was the father of three small children. He was articulate, smart, curious, educated, and brave. Committed heart and soul to non-violent resistance. All the activists knew him well. He was a one-man welcoming committee for all the groups from abroad, such as the Center for Jewish Non-violence.  He was a friend—for many, a soul-mate. Tributes have been pouring in from Israel and abroad. The shock, the huge loss, and the injustice are unthinkable, unbearable, and other such useless words.

Umm al-Khair:  the name means “Mother of Goodness.”  Countless times we rebuilt their houses after the army had destroyed them. My friend ‘Eid lives there. He’s an artist, a sculptor, who has exhibited his work in Berlin among other places. And Umm al-Khair was home to the legendary, fearless Hajj Sulayman, who was murdered by a driver from the Civil Administration in 2022.  The whole Palestinian world came to his funeral, and we were there, too.

Since then the settlers, true to form, have destroyed, more than once, the memorial that the community built for him.

The images above are from Awdah’s facebook and instagram pages, except for one (top left) that shows him standing by the memorial to Haj Suleiman, a still from a brief video message that Awdah sent to the organization “Extend: Learning for Justice in Palestine.” You may see the entire video here. Thanks to Sam Sussman. Video and editing by Emily Glick.

In June ‘Eid and Awdah flew to the States at the invitation of synagogues and churches. They had valid entry visas, but they were turned away in the San Francisco airport and sent back after a 20-hour flight from the Gulf. That is what might happen to Palestinian peace activists these days when they come to the US. No conceivable excuse exists for such discriminatory actions. ‘Eid and Awdah should have been embraced with open arms. The rabbi from a synagogue they were to have visited wrote one of the many remembrances of Awdah.

Awdah was an extraordinary, exemplary human being, loved by all who knew him; but his murder was anything but extraordinary. In the criminal world of the occupation, murder by settlers or soldiers is routine. 

There are days when death and loss stalk me, along with the horror. I wake with the pain every morning, also in the middle of the night. But our life here is still a life, for at least we can continue the struggle for what is right and true.

Awdah was killed by the brute settler Yinon Levi, whom we know too well. Levi was working with a tractor next to the village, on Palestinian land, of course (there is no other kind of land on the West Bank). At some point he started moving through a piece of privately owned Palestinian land (even the twisted law of Israel recognizes their ownership); the villagers protested; he drew his handgun and started shooting. You can see it all clearly in the video clips, including one from Awdah’s own camera, distributed by B’tselem. Awdah was nowhere near him; he was sitting in the community center and playground he had built, documenting the attack from a distance. The bullet killed him instantly. He was 31 years old.

The army held the body and refused to let the villages bury him in Umm al-Khair; they insisted he be buried in Yatta, far from home. The soldiers also tore down the mourners’ tent and drove the mourners away; then they arrested 14 of the villagers, in addition to the five they arrested when Awdah was killed, among them Eid. Levi, the killer, was also arrested, accused of causing death through carelessness (not murder), and then released to house arrest by the court. He was set free in a day or two and charges were dropped, supposedly for lack of evidence because no bullet was found. Several witnesses reported that he said, immediately after the shooting, “I’m happy I killed the Palestinian.” As soon as he was released from house arrest, he returned to the village and resumed working with his tractor.

The list of losses keeps getting longer, like the hours and days and months and years of the deadly Occupation.

****

Margaret:

I, too, wish that I had known Awdah better. I feel as though I did. At a distance, through occasional meetings in Umm al-Kheir, reports from friends in the Center for Jewish Nonviolence and other groups, and from Awdah’s social media posts such as “storiesof_UAK”, I have watched him mature since he was barely out of his teens: playing sports, studying English, becoming a teacher, a husband, a father and a leader.

Since his murder, the cries have resounded world-wide. Solidarity and mourning tents have appeared in far-flung cities. Memories of Awdah are part of every demonstration against the war in Gaza.

In New York a little over a week ago, it was moving to see people holding pictures of children killed in Gaza with their own child nestled against them, and to hear a rabbi (it was Tisha b’Av) chanting from the book of Lamentations.

Photographs of Awdah surrounded the demonstration, and one of Awdah’s American friends spoke about him there. Mourning tents appeared in the city every day for a week.

After at least sixty women of the village spent several days on a hunger strike, the army saw fit to return Awdah’s body to his family, who buried him on Thursday in his beloved Umm al-Kheir. The army declared a closed military zone. Against court orders, it severely limited the number of people allowed to enter. It was as though the village were burying a terrorist, not a non-violent lover of peace.

****

David:

Now a small piece of slightly, almost positive news. On July 31st the men of Mu‘arrajat came back to their homes, intending to stay. Earlier that week the High Court of Justice, with the chief justice, Yitzhak Amit, presiding, heard the villagers’ appeal. They want to go home, but they can’t unless they have real protection 24/7 by the army. The young commander of the army’s forces in the Jordan Valley, still new on the job, lied through his teeth to the judges. He claimed, disingenuously, that there were no problems before the people of Mu‘arrajat had to flee; he said that they left because they had no water. And so on, as if their marauding settler neighbors were innocent and upright humans. The whole courtroom proceeding was a farce, but in the end the chief justice ruled that these people do need effective protection by army and/or police if they are allowed to return home. He may have understood the reality, despite everything.

The villagers took this as a promising sign. They found both soldiers and settlers waiting for them when they arrived back in Mu‘arrajat. The soldiers confiscated one of their trucks because it had some wooden planks in it, and Palestinians are, of course, not allowed to build or rebuild. The soldiers were supposed to protect them, but by midnight they were gone. The settlers, roaming freely in the village, told the Palestinians that they would be killed as soon as the soldiers went. Around midnight the settlers set fire to some of the houses, or what is left of them. Our activists called the police, who sent a car; the policewoman, upon arrival, said she could see no sign of fire, and anyway she was immersed in her telephone. Then she left. She needs an eye exam. The fire was the last straw; the villagers fled, again. But this is not yet the end of the story. There is ample video material from that night, and the villagers’ devoted lawyer, Neta Amar-Shif, will be appealing again to the High Court. Maybe there will be another attempt to come home.

texts and photographs as credited © 2025. Special thanks to Ahmad Al-Rajabi for the photographs below, and to the other photographers and organizations (as credited) who have generously permitted us to present their images here.

If you are anywhere near Hexham, GB, enjoy a selection of our photographs and texts at Haxham Abbey. On Wednesday 20 August, at 7.15pm, there will be talks in the Abbey about the situation in the West Bank by: John Howard, former EAPPI volunteer and member of Co Durham PSC and Omar Hmidat, of Dheisheh refugee camp, and currently a research student at Newcastle University

David Shulman and Margaret Olin, The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine, is still available at Intellect Books, Bristol, GB and The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.