Following Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, the Jahalin Bedouin, together with four other tribes from the Negev Desert (al-Kaabneh, al-Azazmeh, al-Ramadin and al-Rshaida), took refuge in the West Bank, then under Jordanian rule. These tribes are traditionally semi-nomadic agro-pastoralists living in the rural areas around Hebron, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Jericho and the Jordan Valley.

These areas are today part of the so-called “Area C” of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), representing 61% of the West Bank. Under the 1995 Oslo Accords, Israel was granted temporary administrative and security control of Area C, which was due to be gradually returned to the Palestinian Authority by 1999. This never happened and, today, 27 years after the Oslo Accords were signed, Israel retains near exclusive control of Area C, including over law enforcement, planning and construction. It is home to all West Bank Israeli settlements, industrial estates, military bases, firing ranges, nature reserves and settler-only by-pass roads, all under Israeli military control. Over the years, Israel has dispossessed Palestinians of roughly 200,000 hectares of land, including farmland and pastureland, which it then generously allocated to settlements or declared as closed military zones and nature reserves. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers currently live throughout the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) in over 280 settlements, enjoying nearly all the rights and privileges accorded to Israeli citizens living in Israel proper, inside the Green Line. The short-lived Trump “Deal of the Century” recognized permanent Israeli possession of those settlements, in contravention of the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of 23 December 2016, which reaffirmed the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, under international law.

The situation of the Indigenous Palestinian Bedouin refugees of 1948, some 27,000 pastoral herders living under full Israeli military control in Area C, is currently a major humanitarian issue. Greatly at risk are 8,000 Bedouin (60% of whom are children) living in 46 small communities in the Jerusalem Periphery and some 4,500 pastoral herders in the Jordan Valley. Donor-funded humanitarian structures (shelters, goat pens, water tanks, schools, solar panels, toilets) continue to be deliberately targeted for demolition and confiscation: for example, in 2021, the UN Education Cluster reported that 46 Palestinian schools in Area C were under demolition orders or stop work orders, a five-year high, yet in 2022 that number climbed to 56 schools threatened with demolition or demolished and, although Isfey al Fauqa was the only school demolished in 2022, following its original demolition on 23 November on 6 December Israeli authorities confiscated two tents and one latrine provided as humanitarian aid in response to the demolition of that school. Meanwhile, the war crime of forced displacement by Israeli authorities remains a constant threat.