Israel's Settler-Driven Dispossession of West Bank Bedouins Accelerates Three Years After Gaza War

Three years after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and Israel's ensuing war on Gaza, Palestinian Bedouin communities across the occupied West Bank are confronting a systematic campaign of expulsion, land seizure and violent displacement that has fundamentally reshaped their way of life. The settlement enterprise, once pursued through scattered outposts, has evolved into a state-backed mechanism of territorial conquest, with senior Israeli officials openly celebrating the method and the results.

At the center of this transformation lies a strategy that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described with unusual candor during a September 23 ceremony inaugurating the settlement of Metzoke Eretz, built on occupied West Bank hilltops. Speaking weeks before Israel's parliamentary elections, Smotrich paid tribute to the settlers who first established the outpost that made the new settlement possible. He outlined what he called a proven method: establish a farm, seize the land, prepare it, transform it into a community, then move to the next location. Smotrich framed these actions not as real estate ventures but as expressions of Zionism, praising what he described as pioneering heroes.

Metzoke Eretz was formerly known as Netzah Harel, an outpost considered illegal even under Israeli domestic law. It was established in 2023 in the heart of al-Muarrajat, a Bedouin community situated on privately owned Palestinian land east of Ramallah. The transformation from unauthorized outpost to formal settlement reflects a broader pattern documented by Israeli journalists and human rights organizations: the Israeli government has legalized 19 outposts after violently expelling nearby Palestinian populations, according to reporting by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

For the residents of al-Muarrajat, the settlers of Netzah Harel were not abstract political actors but immediate agents of displacement. Alia Mleihat, 29, now lives in a tent in al-Awsaj, a few kilometers from her former home, after being forcibly displaced in July 2025. She recalls that the outpost's settlers participated in every attack carried out against families and confiscated sheep, all under the protection of Israeli police and military forces. The outpost, she said, played a major role in driving Palestinian Bedouin communities from al-Muarrajat and the areas east of Ramallah.

Dror Etkes, founder of the Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, which monitors settlement expansion, said Smotrich's description of his method was accurate except for one crucial omission. The political discourse, Etkes noted, skips the chapter on Palestinian expulsion. He suggested that Smotrich and other politicians deliberately avoid explicit references to displacement to evade potential scrutiny from international criminal courts. They want it to happen, they know that it happens, and they let it happen, Etkes said, describing a policy of willful blindness designed to provide deniability.

The human cost of this strategy is visible in the fragmented lives of those who have been uprooted. Jamal Mleihat, 45, Alia's uncle and a father of seven, now sits with eight relatives inside a bare concrete-block house on a ridge in al-Awsaj, his daughter Sewar on his lap. Below the ridge, rows of young trees climb a cultivated slope toward a factory, while the ridge itself offers only rock and dust. About 25 families from al-Muarrajat and other displaced communities now live in this makeshift arrangement, all forced from their homes within the past three years.

Jamal recalls a different existence before October 7, 2023. His family lived in the pastures without harassment, moved freely across the landscape, and had access to healthcare, a school and water within their encampment. He describes that life as a million times better than the current reality. Since the Hamas attack and Israel's subsequent war on Gaza, the Israeli government has intensified raids across the occupied West Bank, while settlers have been given what amounts to free rein to carry out attacks on Palestinians with minimal pushback from within Israel.

Just below Jamal's shelter, alone on a slope, Muhammad Ghawanmeh lives with his wife and seven children in conditions of severe deprivation. His toilet does not function. He depends on water tanks and has almost no electricity. The rocky track leading to the Mleihat area is too steep to drive. After recent settler attacks, he built a fence around his house. He now lives under constant drone surveillance operated by Israeli settlers, a form of monitoring that adds psychological pressure to already dire material circumstances.

Ghawanmeh originally came from Ras Ein al-Auja, which had been the largest Bedouin community in the central Jordan Valley. The village was considered so resilient that humanitarian coordinators told Al Jazeera in October 2023 that its displacement was unlikely. Instead, more than 600 Palestinian inhabitants experienced the largest single-community expulsion of Bedouins in the past three years, following repeated attacks by settlers from four surrounding outposts. The prediction of stability proved tragically wrong, underscoring how quickly the situation on the ground has deteriorated.

For Ghawanmeh, the loss is measured in both freedom and livelihood. He remembers a childhood when the land and water were open and his family lived happily, grazing sheep across distances of 10 to 15 kilometers before returning home. Today, he says, they cannot go 500 meters from the house. His flock has shrunk from approximately 300 animals to roughly 100, and the surviving sheep are physically thinning. He must now purchase fodder instead of allowing them to graze, because Israeli settlers and the army have largely forbidden access to the land that once sustained his community.

The broader context of these displacements is a West Bank landscape transformed by violence and legal maneuvering. Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has escalated military raids while enabling settler attacks that human rights organizations describe as a pogrom. The legalization of outposts like Metzoke Eretz provides retroactive legitimacy to land seizures that began as unauthorized farms. This process effectively transfers private Palestinian land into Israeli settlement infrastructure, often after the original inhabitants have been violently expelled, creating facts on the ground that complicate any future diplomatic resolution.

The international legal dimension remains a point of contention. All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law, a position reaffirmed by numerous United Nations resolutions and advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice. Yet the pace of settlement expansion and outpost legalization has accelerated rather than slowed. Smotrich's public celebration of the method, coupled with Etkes's observation that the expulsion chapter is deliberately omitted from political discourse, suggests a calculated strategy to avoid accountability while achieving irreversible demographic and territorial change.

For the Bedouin families now clustered in places like al-Awsaj, the future remains uncertain. They live in tents and bare concrete structures, reliant on water tanks and generators, surrounded by the expanding reach of settlements and outposts. Their traditional pastoral economy has been crippled, their freedom of movement severely restricted, and their children's access to education and healthcare disrupted. The dispossession that began with the establishment of farms and outposts has become a permanent condition, one that shows no sign of reversal as long as the political and military dynamics remain unchanged.