Settlers are already there with their herd of goats, climbing up toward the Palestinian tents and huts when we arrive after pushing our car out of a rocky crack in the dirt road to At-Tawil. The morning shift activists are shooing the herd away over the stones and thick thorns; but the settlers, several of them young adolescent boys well trained in the arts of vicious harassment, are pushing the goats back uphill. A Palestinian herd deep in the valley below us is being dispersed by an older settler; the shepherdess is calling out desperate curses at him in her dialect, too colorful even for my Arabic. “Come, come, let me tell you, come here, you stupid thug, you have no reason to be here, you have no right to hurt us….” I don’t think I can paraphrase the obscenities. The settler, unperturbed, his face cruel, also blank, also contorted, continues his march through the herd until we manage to scare him off.

Meanwhile Amir, true to his nature—he’s a psychologist—is arguing with Jackson, the settler sheriff of this land; he has the scraggly beard and thick woven skull-cap, and most important, his submachine-gun. In his own perverse way, he is fairly articulate; he tells us that all Arabs want only to kill Jews, there is no such animal as a good Arab, and as for us, we are traitors who are preventing Jews from protecting themselves. There is no way to penetrate the darkness of his mind. He also tells us that Prime Minister Rabin was not killed by a right-wing Jewish terrorist but rather shot by a Shin-Bet operative standing next to him at the peace demonstration. This is not a theory; Jackson says it’s something he knows for sure. He doesn’t like Bibi or even Smotrich, they are far too soft in his eyes, actually they’re some sort of sick leftists, like us. He’s not troubled by the growing isolation of the State of Israel, quite the contrary; the Jews, he says, are best when they are entirely alone,  עם לבדד ישכון, “a people dwelling in loneliness”  [Numbers 23.9].  Alone, that is, with their Jewish God.

Meanwhile, the teenage settlers, one young and very aggressive, another a skinny runt of a kid whose weapon consists in puffing foul air in our faces, and a few more, all of them scruffy, unkempt, neglected, brainwashed, collide with us, pushing us down toward the rocks. Slowly we manage to draw the settlers and their sheep away from the Palestinian homes. It goes on for a long time. It’s a sun-drenched spring day, ruined by human terror, warped minds, the stench of stupidity. I say to the young kid when he comes at me, “Why are you wasting your life with all this foolishness? Why not turn yourself into a person?” He tells me—“tells” isn’t the right word—that I am wasting my life. Maybe I am: just look at this devilish choreography amidst the stones and thorns all afternoon.

There’s a well not far from the tents. Jackson has the urgent need to tell us that this well doesn’t belong to the Palestinians, it’s a Jewish well, dug by our ancestors a mere two thousand years ago or so. You know, we say to him, you’re standing on private Palestinian land. Jackson says “There is no such thing as Palestinian land.”

On and on, through the afternoon. I can’t remember how many times we had to chase the settler herd away with their masters. At some point the army shows up in a jeep, presumably summoned by the settlers. Four masked, armed soldiers with a tall, 3-barred lieutenant. He’s not threatening us, he asks why we’re here, we explain. The settlers also have a say. Then, predictably, the lieutenant tells us that the army has declared the village to be a Closed Military Zone, which means that we—not the settlers of course, after all “they live here”—have to leave. We demand to see the order in writing, with the map that comes with it and some high-ranking general’s signature. The lieutenant calls his headquarters and asks that they send him the order to his phone. We’ve seen far too many Closed Military Zone orders, we know what to do. We wait, with the lieutenant, for the order to come through. Which today it doesn’t. It’s already 5:30 PM, soon it will be dark. OK, says the lieutenant, I can’t show you the order, so never mind, you can stay for now.

A comic interlude. The army jeep leaves. We notice that the settler goats have managed to get into a fenced-off garden patch where the Palestinians are raising crops of peas and fava beans, ful. The goats are feasting on the thick, juicy leaves. We manage to get over, or under, the barbed-wire fence in order to get the goats out of there. Goats, much as I love them, are not the world’s most clear-headed animals. We click our tongues and clap our hands at them, but it takes some time before we find the slim hole in the fence through which they entered or were pushed in by the settler boys. Slowly, mindfully, we help them exit through that same hole. But of course there is one recalcitrant black goat who has no intention of leaving. He sits down amidst the leaves, looking smug, almost regal. We can’t budge him. After a while he grudgingly gets up and with excruciating, stately steps makes his way to the hole. Chock this up as one of our more masterful achievements. We saved most of the ful and peas.

The settlers head up toward Nidal’s house; they will soon be moving back to their rickety outpost, but not without demonstrating one more time that they own everything here, the house, Nidal’s sheep, the water tanks, the two donkeys (twice they’ve tried to steal them), the beautiful olive grove, the land itself, and also the clouds overhead and the setting sun. In short, they are the absolute rulers. After they leave, we have a long talk with Nidal. He’s a tall, vigorous man, his face weathered by terror. His children now live in Aqraba, not far away. He’s holding on, hoping somehow to survive in At-Tawil. Long ago he worked in Tel Aviv, for years, in construction, in a restaurant, wherever he could find a job. He speaks a fluent Hebrew, we also speak with him in Arabic. There is no end to his stories of depredation, violence, threats, theft, insult, and terror. Not long ago a settler came, maybe Jackson himself, to tell him that this house is not Nidal’s. It belongs to the settler, who says, simply, “I’m a Jew, so it’s mine.” One of our activists happened to be present that day; quick-witted, he said, “I’m a Jew, so at least half of this plot of land belongs to me, and I am now giving it to Nidal.” In fact, however, the land belongs to Nidal’s father and his uncle. And then there was the seventeen-year-old boy from Nidal’s family who was badly attacked by settlers, left bleeding profusely from a head-wound. Nidal called the army. It took them a long time to come, and when they did, they arrested the boy’s father. Standard practice.

Nidal used to ride his donkey every day to the famous Sartaba Mountain, overlooking the Jordan Valley; we can see it from where we stand. One morning he got word that his herd of cows was attacked in the Valley and six cows stolen. Eventually Nidal got the cows back, after paying a fine of 19,000 shekels—a small fortune. Last week the settlers stole a water pump near the house. They have also tried to cut down the olive grove. We say to Nidal; “You are a strong man. You amaze us.” “A day will come,” Nidal says, “when we will no longer be strong.” All five of us are feeling the sharp pain and the endless injustice. Amir says to him: “Where is Allah when we need him?” Nidal: “Allah is here. But if you don’t help Him, He won’t help you.” Nidal is trying to help Him. It’s a theological point. But it’s lonely up here, he says. They come at all hours of the night, they invade the house, they want to frighten us so we will go away.

He’s one of those remarkable people you meet in this struggle. A noble soul—not a word I would use lightly– forged in kindness. We will do whatever we can. Maybe we can somehow take the edge off his aloneness. “We’re here, we’ll be back next week, we are with you.” He thanks us with the ancient formulas, and before we leave, I say to him, “It is we who are grateful to you, mamnunin ktir.” A little surprised, he repeats the word, savors it.

text, and all photographs not otherwise credited: David Shulman ©2026.

Our book, “The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine,” now in its second printing, can be obtained from Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press or from an online or local bookseller