Property deeds no protection for Palestinians as settler violence spreads

Mleihat’s account tracks closely with the findings of a report released this week by Amnesty International, which concluded that Israel is pursuing the annexation of a large part of the occupied West Bank through what it called a deliberate, state-backed campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities - amounting to the war crime of unlawful transfer and the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.Citing United Nations figures, the report counts some 5,910 Palestinians forced from 117 communities between January 2023 and April 2026, at least 45 of them depopulated entirely. The Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate, which includes the land where Mleihat now lives, accounted for the largest share of the displaced.Amnesty's report focuses on Area C, the roughly 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli control, where the state possesses the administrative machinery of removal - including demolition orders, "firing zone" declarations, and the designation of unregistered land as state land.On Mleihat's plot - which is in Area B, privately registered, and held with an official deed - those levers are largely unavailable. The army cannot easily demolish a legally built home on titled land, and the Civil Administration cannot lawfully evict its owner.What is left, then, is extra-legal force."The only way for the state to kick them out is illegally," said Yotam, an Israeli activist who has done protective presence with Palestinian communities in the area for several years. "And for that, they use these settler gangs."It is for this reason, activists and locals say, that some of the most violent outposts to emerge recently - including in places like Tayasir, Beit Imrin, Jilijliya, Ein al-Duyuk, al-Mughayyir, Jaloud, and Madama - are in fact located in Areas B and A (which is under complete Palestinian administrative control), where land deeds and Palestinian civil authority were once thought to offer protection.There are two settler outposts in the area of Taybeh Junction. The newest, locals said, was established by Ben Pazi, not on the families' private land but on a small sliver of state land at a nearby water-access point - a foothold the state does nothing to stop, even as the displacement it generates radiates outward into the surrounding private plots of Area B.Yotam said he has seen, hanging in the local police station, a photograph of Ben Pazi's herds grazing on the now-emptied lands of Wadi as-Seeq, apparently given to the station as a gift.Meanwhile, Ben Pazi’s newest outpost has taken on some of the aggressively violent tactics found in his other outposts that erased so many Palestinian communities before, carried out largely by a group of teenage settlers tasked with both herding the settler flocks and harassing locals.On June 1, the Israeli military signed a yearlong closed military zone order covering the area immediately around the junction, restricting civilian access to the site. While the order technically applies to the settlers, in practice, residents and activists say, it has been enforced only against the solidarity activists who offer protective presence to the family residing in the closed area. The settlers remain in the recently established illegal outpost alongside a permanent military post on the hill. Such one-sided enforcement has been used elsewhere, before Bedouin communities were subsequently violently displaced.Nayef Khalaife, the father of the last family on the northern side of the road, sees no contradiction in any of it. "When the army comes, it doesn't talk to the settlers. It comes, stands by him, and leaves," he said. "There's no law. There's no law for the settlers. We are outside the law's protection."Al Jazeera has contacted the Israeli military and security authorities for comment on the allegations made by Palestinian locals and activists in this article, but has yet to receive a response.