OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (Palestine Foundation Information Center) A group of “Hilltop Youth” settlers on Sunday wrote racist slogans on the tents of residents in the Khan al-Ahmar community east of Occupied Jerusalem.
Eid Jahalin, spokesperson for the Bedouin communities in the West Bank and head of the Khan al-Ahmar community, said that residents were shocked to discover settlers had written racist messages on their tents, aimed at intimidating them and threatening their presence.
He explained that this was not the first settler attack against Khan al-Ahmar residents, who suffer similar daily assaults.
Jahalin added that settlers have taken control of a hill just 120 meters behind the community, severing its connection with other Bedouin communities, including the Ara’ara and Tabna communities of the Jahalin tribe.
He confirmed that “settlers have assaulted school children, teachers, stolen livestock, attacked women, and beaten shepherds, resulting in injuries that required treatment at Jericho Hospital.”
Additionally, settlers have cut off water supplies to the community, which consists of 38 families totaling around 380 individuals.
Jahalin noted that if the residents of Khan al-Ahmar are forcibly removed, it would mean severing the northern West Bank from the south, linking settlements together, and closing the eastern gateway to Jerusalem.
He warned of a clear escalation in settlement expansion around the community, now surrounded by nearly five settler outposts.
He further stated that “the greatest danger is that shepherds in the community now refrain from taking their sheep to pasture, fearing settler theft, as happened to the Jahalin Arabs east of Bethlehem.”
