Scattered around the periphery of the ever-endangered village of Al-Khan Al-Ahmar, to the east of Jerusalem on the road down to the Dead Sea, are small Palestinian Bedouin communities still somehow holding on. Most of them by now have only one extended family. Many of them are from the Ka`abneh tribe, or a symbiosis of Ka`abneh and the Jahalin. They’ve been there for many decades, at least. All of these communities, without exception, have crazed Israeli settlers at their throats, usually dominating the hills overlooking the Bedouin homes. The settlers do here what they always do:  they cut the pipes that bring water to these communities; they bring their goats and sheep into the villages, so they can mix them with the Bedouin herds and then claim that the Bedouin have stolen the settler sheep; they enlist the police—now totally Ben-Gvirified—into harassing and torturing Palestinians; and so on, with the overt aim of driving these people from their homes. A few days ago settlers came storming in their Ranger tractor into a Bedouin herd near Nahila; they mowed down two Palestinians and several sheep. The police came and arrested, guess who, the two Palestinian victims.

In Nahila, Qa’id sits with us for two hours in the early morning. With the help of the indefatigable Friends of the Jahalin, he got permission to put up a thin metal fence around the village houses. Since then, the settlers have a harder time getting in with their sheep and goats. Today two of his grandsons come to play a form of soccer with Daniel. They are fans of Christiano and dislike Messie. When I tell them I rather admire Messie, they demand I switch allegiance.

For years Qa’id worked as a bulldozer driver in the constantly expanding Israeli suburb of  Ma‘aleh Adumim, not far from Nahila. We can see it from where we are sitting. The suburb sits on stolen Palestinian land.

I ask Qa’id about his family. He has five daughters. But he was under pressure to marry again—many Bedouin have two or more wives, up to four—so that he could produce a son. To say a man is a father of daughters is a common insult. The Qa‘abnehs were working on finding a second bride for him, possibly some young woman from Beit Hanina. But Qa’id was reluctant. Meanwhile, his wife was again pregnant. A few months later, a baby boy was born! So much for the threat of a second marriage. Great relief. He says, perhaps unaware that he is quoting Marcus Aurelius, that a person should simplify one’s life.

He has a story to tell us. “One late afternoon I looked up at the hill with the settlers’ new outpost at the top. I saw there was a single sheep—a settler’s sheep—alone on the hill. It was getting dark, and I was sure that the dogs or jackals would eat her. So I called the border police, and eventually they came. They couldn’t see anything in the dark, so I took my flashlight and showed them the sheep on the hill. They rescued her and brought her back safely to the settlers. The next morning the same settlers again brought their herds to invade our homes, and they also blocked a tanker bringing us water.” No good deed goes unpunished. Qa’id narrates the tale with a certain amused, ironic tone. I don’t think it’s funny.

2.

So far there have been no massive settler pogroms in these desert villages, in contrast with the experience of Palestinians in the central West Bank and in the Jordan Valley. However, Al-Khan al-Ahmar, the largest community here, has for years been targeted for total destruction by the government. I was there when the army bulldozers started their demolitions, in 2018 (see also here); at the last minute, international pressure, especially from the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, forced the government to put its plan on hold. That doesn’t mean that they won’t try again. Smotrich and his ilk on the violent right have been pushing for it.

Toward midday we move on to the isolated compound of Abu Jihad, a small cluster of homes called only by his name.  Most nights the settlers from the hilltop cut the water pipes, and Abu Jihad then mends them again in the morning. He makes light of this daily exercise—or perhaps it’s a ritual. You can’t live for more than a few hours in the fierce desert without water. It’s sizzling hot today, like all other summer days here. Agnes has come with colored markers and paper and a board game, and Abu Jihad’s children run to her as if embracing another mother. These children are trembling with joyfulness. They, at least, can forget, for that hour, the constant underlying threat.

Abu Jihad says he is living in a prison. He is not allowed to move more than a few yards away from his house, to the edge of the highway. Sometimes settlers concoct some absurd charge in order to make his life miserable; they have the police haul him into the station for interrogation, so they can then indulge their pleasure in telling lies, accusing his children of this or that; and of course the police are anyway hand in glove with the settlers. The settlers are also quite happy to attack one of his younger sons; the boy got away with bad head wounds. Abu Jihad says his life is full of pain; if only the earlier times would come back, before the settlers came, life would be livable again.

We move from family to family, warmly welcomed everywhere. Always there is more coffee and the super-sweet Bedouin tea. Despite everything, I see no trace of hatred in their hearts. A steady, savage hatred is the settlers’ norm. What amazes me is how these Bedouin families continue to function like human beings—gentle, moderate, witty, sometimes even jocular, like Abu Abdallah, who entertained us in his eponymous compound through the mid-afternoon hours, and brave, with unfailing dignity– in the face of so much state-sponsored hate. It’s a kind of miracle. Perhaps a basic, rock-bottom humaneness is more robust than we might expect. Maybe the heat and the sudden delicious desert winds also help.  

Then there’s Ibrahim from Khatrura, whom we didn’t meet today. But we’ve heard his story from Qa’id. Ibrahim had kept part of his herd in the village of Sinjil, east of Ramallah. One night settlers, backed up by soldiers, invaded Sinjil and stole some 500 sheep, including 150 to 200 belonging to Ibrahim. The theft is bad enough, but Qa’id says that’s not the worst of it. The settlers and/or soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian in Sinjil that night. The sheep are gone for good, as is the Palestinian man. You can be sure that whoever shot him was not and will not be arrested. In the settlers’ hierarchy of being, Palestinians are much lower than sheep or goats, lower than dogs and jackals, probably classed somewhere close to spiders and beetles. They can, of course, be killed with impunity. We know who claim to inhabit the pinnacle of existence and who are perpetrating these crimes.

All day long the dissonance keeps getting worse. There are decent people striving to survive, with the nobility of heart that some human beings cultivate and naturally embody, even in dire situations.  And there are people who cultivate pure, relentless evil, at the initiative and with the full support of the government of Israel. If you could spend a day with us in Al Khan al-Ahmar or its vicinity, you could experience both kinds in plenty.

Text: David Shulman © 2026. Photographs and other media as credited.

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