Video: How settler attacks and water diversion erased a Palestinian community

What Happened

Haitham Rashaidh, described as among the last residents of Ein al-Auja, a natural spring and waterfall north of Jericho in the occupied West Bank, packed his family's tents and belongings onto a tractor and travelled for two hours across difficult terrain to al-Balqa in the Jordan Valley, where they set up camp alongside displaced neighbours. The article reports that the spring once supported a Bedouin community of more than 100 families and flowed at an estimated thousands of cubic metres daily, but has now been reduced to a trickle. The report attributes the community's depopulation to Israel's diversion of water and continuing settler attacks, saying that life there became untenable.

Key Actors

Why It Matters

The displacement from Ein al-Auja highlights the use of water access and settler violence as drivers of Palestinian departure from the Jordan Valley, an area of the occupied West Bank that Israel has long sought to hold under its control. The loss of a spring that once supported more than 100 Bedouin families illustrates how environmental and security pressures can erase established Palestinian communities without formal eviction orders.

Watch For

Monitor whether the more than 100 displaced families remain at al-Balqa or attempt to return to Ein al-Auja, any official Israeli response to the water diversion allegation, and reports of further settler attacks or displacement in the northern Jordan Valley.