I knew it was coming. I could feel it in my body, also in the air. For the last two or three weeks, settler harassment was constantly intensifying. You could see they were planning something big. They brought a settler called Micha Sudai down from the hill country to take charge of the ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley. Sudai has a reputation for being brutal and effective. Now he’s in the outpost just a few yards away from Ras al-‘Ain.
*NB: Please read to the end. Or skip the rest and go directly to the end.
Hanady’s sitting room is a shrine to her late husband, 31-year-old Awdah Hathaleen, killed in cold blood in July by a settler who was punished with three days of house arrest. Only a small diamond-shaped design of sequins to break the unrelenting darkness of her black draped clothing, Hanady tells me that everything is gone for her: everything left with Awdah: her home life, her future, her dreams, the list goes on.
Note: While I cannot photograph the faces of the Bedouin women of Umm al-Khair, I am encouraged to photograph the children.
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The village of Mu‘arrajat is gone, ravaged and despoiled by savage settlers. There were years of harassment, large-scale theft, repeated violence, and death-threats. On July 3, 2025, after a gruesome night, the villagers took apart their homes, loaded their few possessions onto trucks, and left. Remember that date of infamy.
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Michal Peleg is now gone. Another enormous loss, just two weeks after Muhammad died.
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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.
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1. Visits to Prisoners. Text and photographs by Margaret Olin
I began this post on Martin Luther King Day, 2025, a moment to think back on all we in the United States have achieved and the distance we still must go to realize King’s dream of racial equality. In 2025, this day of concern for justice and love also marked the inauguration of a president who opposes these values and many others we hold. Some, dreading this event, found ways of trying to forget about it. My way was to think back to my visit to Israel and Palestine this past December.
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Moments of respite. Seven, maybe eight water tankers manage to fill up at the ‘Auja stream toward sunset. We are there to greet them. For once, no settlers come to ruin things.
Continue readingThe Bitter Landscapes of Palestine, by Margaret Olin and David Shulman is now available through Intellect Books, Great Britain, or The University of Chicago Press, USA, or any of the usual places, like Amazon. Perhaps your local bookstore carries it.
The Mini-War of the Water continues apace.
It’s hot in Ras al-‘Ain, in more ways than one. It’s become a flash point. The settlers are fully focused on driving the shepherd families of this village out of their homes and fields. And it’s high summer. Nights are stifling in the tent where we sleep, though the flaps are open to the stars and the distant lights across the river, in Jordan. At 4 AM there’s a cool breeze, a tease; as soon as the sun rises, at around 6, the temperature hits 40 degrees Centigrade; by mid-morning, it’s somewhere between 45 and 50. Sometimes a strong wind blows boiling dust over everything and everyone—our tent, the sheep in their pens, the few vehicles parked on the gravel paths, the shacks of tin or asbestos, the scraggly trees. At first you don’t notice how thirsty you are. Then it hits you and won’t go away, no matter how much you drink. I feel the thirst, first, in my eyes, every minute (even drier than usual). And then there’s the other kind of thirst, in the heart.
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Before Pesach most years, I revise the Haggadah I began to compile decades ago. I gather material from traditional sources as well as from more recent alternative Haggadot created with various agendas in mind – political, ecological; or from commentary, unrelated literature, and remarks of friends and colleagues relevant to our family or to whomever we might be hosting at our seder table that year. I insert images that I find or create. Some years ago, I placed on the back cover of my Haggadah a photograph of a goat I met in the Jordan Valley, to recall the traditional song Had Gadya, an only kid, sung toward the end of the seder. It begins with the verse “an only ,kid, an only kid, my father bought for two zuzzim, and continues with a litany of woe, as the goat is eaten by a cat, that is then bitten by a dog, and, after a series of beatings and burnings and slaughter by various agents, including objects and living creatures animal and human, the song ends with retribution by the angel of death, who in turn succumbs to the Holy One, blessed be He, thus ending the carnage on a peaceful note, none of the predators left standing, like the end of a bloody Elizabethan play.
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It seems quiet and peaceful. We are with Jibrin, planting a small crop of tobacco, which he sells, and I suppose, smokes. Since my last visit, his wife Wadha has had an operation on her back and I am happy to see her bending down to plant in the straight furrows he plows in the tiny field.
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