We first connected in July 2024 on WhatsApp, using ‘getting-to-know-you’ type messages, hurriedly written, and transmitted in microbursts. In-between calls and meetings and train commutes, I would ask “How are things in Umm al-Khair? ”
The replies were disheartening: “I’m really tired of giving bad news. Things are not good, honestly, nothing has changed.” My responses, tapped into a keypad, bounced into the ether and delivered as small squiggles on a pocket size glass screen, offered little comfort despite my best efforts. As someone who exists for words and language, I felt I was failing.
By late 2024, the situation in the village of Umm al-Khair, in the West Bank, was more ominous: “Attacks are everywhere. The settlers are back again to make trouble and provoke us.”
Peace Not Apartheid
Thursday January 9th 2025, was a cold day in Washington DC, overcoat and scarf weather. It was bright and dry but a crisp, biting wind savaged the city. Outside, people hurriedly shuffled, heads down, shoulders hunched. Despite the weather a large congregation gathered outside Washington’s National Cathedral, the second-largest church building in the US and the third-tallest structure in its capital city. Amongst the crowd was newly elected president Trump, along with ex-presidents Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton. This was after all a historic morning – ex-president Jimmy Carter was being laid to rest with full state honours.
Carter was a controversial president – has any US president been otherwise? A farmer with a strong work ethic, an easy going demeanour and an IQ of 158, Carter offered an appealing alternative to the Nixon/Ford era for some. Others saw Carter as weak and politically frail, especially during his handling of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Perhaps Carter was just the right leader for the wrong time – he was unceremoniously ousted by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.
After the defeat, Carter, an introvert by nature, withdrew from the public arena, but not from politics. Despite his inexcusable mishandling of East Timor, he seemed capable of holding balanced perspectives, with a nod to human rights. He appeared to speak for the underclass, helping the marginalised and advocating for the oppressed. Despite his quiet, reserved manner, he didn’t shy away from verbalising the ills that plagued the world. In 2006, Carter published a 300-page book which forensically examined the occupation of Palestine. The work was thoughtful and informed – after all, Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel.
On the book’s release, Carter said: “The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America.”
He shared some of those facts when interviewed by a leading radio station at the time of the book’s launch: “When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so [illegal] settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa.”
Courageously, Carter titled the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
As Carter was laid to rest, I received a voice note from Umm al-Khair: “It was a really tough night. The settlers went crazy. They came here aggressively. We complained to the [Israeli] police, but nothing happened. We really need people, activists, to help us.”
January 9th 2025, was the 459th day of the Ghazzah genocide.
The Vanishing Village
Umm al-Khair is a village located in the southern West Bank in Occupied Palestine. There is something special about this place – a sweeping landscape that appears simultaneously majestic and yet vulnerable. The area is rippled by smooth-edged hills that hold your gaze then gently roll away, while dusty tracks slither into a sand-coloured horizon dotted by the rich greens and dark browns of vegetation. This is a wary geography, and despite its beauty, it tries hard not to be noticed, as if shying away from sinister eyes.
Umm al-Khair is Palestinian but has been occupied by Britain, Jordan and most recently Israel. The population, estimated to be around 250, is Bedouin, and they are at risk of vanishing.
A few miles north of the village is the illegal Israeli settlement of Carmel, which was established at gun point on Bedouin land in 1980, and subsequently civilianised in 1981. Ever since its miraculous inception, Carmel has proved a hotbed of hatred and hostility towards its more established neighbour. Over the last four decades there has been a prolonged assault on Umm al-Khair consisting of the Israeli government’s ongoing demolition of homes, outbuildings and infrastructure, the Israeli military’s constant harassment of villagers, and the never-ending intimidation, vandalism, and violence by settlers, many from Carmel, under the protection of the Israeli army. Be in no doubt, this is a very deliberate effort to de-populate the village and illegally seize and occupy the land. Carmel is proof that in the West Bank, land theft begets land theft.
Efforts to frighten away the population and steal Umm al-Khair went largely unreported despite half of the village being appropriated by the early 2000s. Large villa-style homes were illegally built, sometimes just a few metres from Bedouins in tents, whose own homes had been demolished. In June 2008, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof concluded the Israeli occupation of the West Bank was ‘morally repugnant.’ Kristof went onto contrast the living conditions of Carmel, ‘a lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb’ with Umm al-Khair, ‘They [Umm al-Khair residents] have no running water. They are not connected to the power grid that lights up every settlement and outpost in this remote region. They have no access road.’
Sadly, Kristof’s piece didn’t get the attention it deserved, and the harassment and demolitions continued unbated. In 2011, a villager* revealed how she explained events at Umm al-Khair to her toddler: “Then my three-year-old daughter started asking questions: ‘Why are the army here? Why do they have to destroy those houses? Why do those people have to move?’ I couldn’t answer her. The questions were just too big. So, I started to lie to her. I told her the army had made a mistake. One of the other children in the village was so traumatised that he didn’t speak for days after the bulldozers came, so I think that I was probably right to try to protect my daughter.”
In November 2024, Naomi Price-Lazarus, who describes herself as a secular Jew from Seattle, wrote a stinging op-ed in the Seattle Times after spending time at Umm al-Khair. She addressed her American audience, reminding them that Americans constitute fifteen percent of settlers in the West Bank: ‘As taxpayers, we have a responsibility to push for the sanctioning of violent settlers. We all deserve the right to sleep soundly at night and to wake up knowing that our homes will still be there when the sun sets.’
Price-Lazarus was right to ring the alarm bell. Four months earlier, during one week in June, eleven homes were demolished in the village by order of the government. During the same week there was a significant increase in attacks by settlers, with some forcibly entering villagers’ homes and occupying them for several hours. There was also an escalation in violence. Villagers, young and old, were attacked with pepper spray and wrestled to the ground, several armed settlers fired live ammunition into the air, while others cut a mains water pipe rendering it inoperable. Temperatures during that week hovered in the mid to high thirties. When an ambulance arrived on the scene to transport half a dozen women and children to hospital, it was blocked by the settlers. The week’s depravity played out in front of a contingent of Israeli soldiers and police. None intervened.
Remember Us, We Were Here
January 25th 2025 WhatsApp message: ‘Happening right now. Settlers raid the village and trying to get into the houses. The police came and they did nothing.’
Sunday 2nd February 2025 WhatsApp message: ‘Settlers from Carmel brought a digger and started work, here inside the village.’
Monday 3rd February 2025 WhatsApp message: ‘The settlers are back again today to work here in the village to build their olive farm.’
Friday 14th February 2025 WhatsApp message: ‘Settlers are throwing our stuff off our land while planting their trees. Soldiers are protecting them.’
There is something special about Umm al-Khair – it is a rare place, an in-between place that hovers between a mortal’s last gasp and an angel’s first breath. Umm al-Khair lingers refusing to vanish, to abandon those who shelter under her wings. This exceptional place continues to breathe despite four decades of slow suffocation. And in the night sky, when everywhere is dark, and everything is quiet, when a universe of stars stare down, this hallowed place with her blessed people answers to her only true name: Umm al-Khair.
Footnote: *For safety reasons we have not named the villager, who provided a personal testimony to a leading NGO.
©2025 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer
