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Salem al-Jahalin, 73, also known as Abu Nayef, circles his home in the Jabal al-Baba Bedouin community outside the town of al-Aizariya, east of Jerusalem. His eyes scan the surrounding terrain as far as he can see, bracing for any incursion by the Israeli army. This is the fourth time the military has threatened to demolish his home, delivering, once again, a notice informing him that his land had been claimed by one of the largest settlement blocs in the West Bank: “Your home is built on the lands of Ma’ale Adumim.”

Abu Nayef’s cup of tea goes cold before he gets a chance to sip it, his mind occupied by the uncertain fate that stalks him, as it does all the Bedouin around Jerusalem. His fingers roll a new cigarette as he tries to light it, raindrops hitting it once, the wind extinguishing it the next. “Every time they demolish, we rebuild,” Abu Nayef says. “Where would we go? They want to displace us from the land, but it’s impossible — we’ll die before we leave.”

Salem’s situation is similar to that of every Palestinian Bedouin living in the Jerusalem wilderness — locally known as the badiya of Jerusalem, a vast expanse of semi-arid plains and rolling hills that Bedouin communities have called home for generations. These communities now stand as the last barrier against the E1 settlement project, a long-halted colonization plan that aims to seize a strategic tract of land at the node separating the northern West Bank from the south, and which also encompasses the area Israel calls “Greater Jerusalem.”

Jabal al-Baba is one of 46 Bedouin communities scattered across the badiya, stretching across the steppe to the Dead Sea. Together they form a large Palestinian population bloc east of the city, alongside the four Palestinian towns of Abu Dis, al-Aizariya, Za’im, and al-Sawahra. Although an exact estimate of the total number of people in these 46 communities is unavailable today, in 2017 the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) put the number at 8,174.

A key lynchpin in the plan to transfer the Bedouin population from the E1 area is their forced sedentarization in 170 dunams of land in Abu Dis. Known as the “Shami neighborhood” project or Plan No.1627/7, the plan was submitted in March to the Israeli Civil Administration, the military body in charge of governing the civil affairs of Palestinians in most of the West Bank.

West Bank Faces Economic Crisis as Israel Withholds Tax Revenue and Work Permits

The so-called “neighborhood” is intended to host the Bedouin communities of Khan al-Ahmar, Abu al-Nuwar, Arab al-Jahalin, Wadi Jamal, Jabal al-Baba, Wadi Suneisel, and Bir al-Maskub.

Earlier this week, the first steps in the forced resettlement plan were set in motion by hardline Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who issued an order on Tuesday for the immediate removal of the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar. Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Smotrich’s move came in response to the disclosure of a secret request by International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan for an international arrest warrant against him.

Jabal al-Baba and the Terror of the E1 Plan

The Jahalin clan, from which Abu Nayef descends, was first displaced by Israel during the Nakba in 1948, expelling them from the town of Tel Arad in the northeastern Negev. Since then, the Jahalin have spread across the Jerusalem wilderness, but those steppes have been gradually seized by the Israeli army for settlement construction over several decades, corralling the Jahalin into fixed Bedouin communities. This forced Abu Nayef to settle in the........

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