Palestinian families in Jordan Valley face displacement deadline today

Thirty-six Palestinian families in the Abu El Ajaj Bedouin community, near Jiftlik in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley, face the threat of forced displacement today after more than 40 demolition orders were issued against their homes and community structures, the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) has said.

According to residents, armed Israeli settlers issued the demolition orders and set a deadline of Wednesday 9 September — today — threatening violence against anyone who refuses to leave. In the nearby community of Ash-Shuneh, residents given a similar verbal ultimatum have since received a postponement, though MAP said threats from settlers remain.

The threats come a day after Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced a new package of UK measures against illegal Israeli settlements, including an import ban on settlement goods, sanctions on “extremist settlers” and on companies and individuals financing settlement expansion, and a tightening of arms export rules to refuse licences that “materially contribute to the occupation.” 

Abu El Ajaj is among the communities served by MAP’s mobile clinics, which provide healthcare including in “Area C” — the roughly 60 per cent of the West Bank where Palestinian communities are denied permits to build permanent medical facilities. 

In a press release, MAP said its mobile clinics reached 1,128 people in Jiftlik in the first six months of 2026, offering routine check-ups, medicines, mental health support and primary healthcare. Families say that if the demolitions go ahead, they will also lose access to this healthcare.

The Ash-Shuneh community member said: “The nearest school and health centre are two or three kilometres away, and we have to walk. Imagine a child having to walk that distance to school. Imagine a pregnant woman having to walk it to reach a health centre. Imagine a sick child needing medical care and having no choice but to walk.”

Saddam Dueis, a member of the Abu El Ajaj community, said Israeli settlers “frequently intimidate and harass us almost on a daily basis, going around our homes and playing loud music and threatening us verbally,” and prevent residents from grazing their livestock. “Our biggest fear is the settlers attacking us inside our homes and posing a direct threat to our children,” he said. “If the imminent demolitions happen, we have nowhere else to go. We cannot sleep at night, constantly worrying about it.”

READ: Israel conducting ‘state-led annexation’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ in West Bank: Amnesty International

Dueis said armed settlers had repeatedly raided the community alongside Israeli forces, damaging livestock barns and other structures. The community was demolished by Israeli forces in 2014, he said, and now sits just 50 metres from the nearest Israeli settlement. Families fear losing both their homes and their livestock, which he said is their only source of income.

A member of the Ash-Shuneh community, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said settlers “regularly raid the community, accompanied by Israeli forces. They are slowly choking us. They are making it harder and harder for us to survive here. And then they come to our homes and directly threaten us to leave.” He added: “We are the ones who are unarmed. They are the ones carrying weapons. And yet the Israeli forces come to ‘protect’ the settlers, not to protect us. The only thing we can do is stay. To remain here. To refuse to leave our community.”

Residents said the demolition orders followed months of escalating settler harassment. On 25 August, members of one family were reportedly beaten during an attack in the area. The Ash-Shuneh resident said settlers “went to the home of a family closest to the road” — a 58-year-old man, his wife and their child — and beat and threatened them, demanding they warn the rest of the community it had ten days to leave or settlers would burn their houses, attack them and take their livestock. “More than a week has passed since then,” he said. “Now we have only two days left.”

The community member said residents are now calling for international intervention: “We want practical action on the ground. We need protection from displacement. We need protection from these attacks. And we need the international community to act according to its obligations under international law… we don’t know what will happen to us.” 

Dueis added: “We need intervention by the UK government to freeze and stop the imminent demolition and forced displacement; we need means to stay resilient on our land. We call on people to come, bear witness and document these violations. Stopping trade with illegal settlements is a positive first step as a punitive measure to what we are going through.”

The threats come amid what MAP describes as escalating settler attacks, land seizures and restrictions on Palestinian communities across the Jordan Valley and the wider West Bank. The UN Human Rights Office has separately found that the expulsion of more than 30,000 Palestinians from three West Bank refugee camps, and the prevention of their return, amounts to a violation of international law.

Israel’s apartheid policies in Area C, MAP said, mean that Palestinian communities including Jiftlik are routinely denied permits to build essential infrastructure, including permanent healthcare facilities, while Israeli military checkpoints, gates and movement restrictions can make travel to healthcare difficult or impossible.

Aisha Mansour, MAP’s West Bank director, said: “Jiftlik is a stark example of what ethnic cleansing looks like across the occupied West Bank right now. Palestinians are being stripped of the basic conditions they need to live, while settlements expand aggressively around them and settlers – backed by Israeli forces – enjoy total impunity.”

“The UK Government must act now and put an end to Israel’s settlement project for good,” Mansour said. “With its policies on settlements due to be announced imminently, it must look at what is happening in Jiftlik and use this moment to take further action to stop Palestinians being forcibly driven from their land.”

READ: Israel advances plans for more than 1,000 settlement homes in central West Bank