Every morning, the first thing Alaa Hathleen does is anxiously verifying his WhatsApp messages with a single question in his mind: “Who will not be homeless today?”
A little over two weeks ago, it was his turn. At the beginning of February 18, Hathleen, 25, was still asleep in his family home in the town of Umm al-Kheir on the outskirts of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank occupied by Israel when his mother ran to the room, terrified. Israeli soldiers and excavators were outside, he shouted.
Less than half an hour later, they were standing outside their home, watching with horror while an excavator crossed the building, crushing its walls in rubble and taking their metal roof in half.
When asked to discuss the incident on Thursday, Israel’s defense forces could not provide an answer from the local time on Friday afternoon.
The landscape of hills and small villages of Masafer Yatta was renewed International attention when “no other land”, a Basel Adra documentary, a Palestinian activist, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli research journalist, won an Oscar on Sunday.
The film highlighted violence and abuse committed by Israeli forces and settlers against the Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, but Hathleen said he feared he could “Open the doors of hell” for those who lived there, worried that Israeli settlers and forces can increase their attacks in reprisals angry at the film.
Hathleen said that he believed it was important to highlight the reality facing the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, but in the weeks after the documentary was announced as a nominee to the Academy Award, he said that there had been a new violence in the area, with an international warning of amnesty last week that another nearby village was low “imminent threat of forms.”
Hathleen, a physiotherapist and activist, now sleeps in a large tent outside his brother’s house with other relatives. They feared the reconstruction of their home only for Israeli forces to collapse again, while the threat of a violent settlers hangs on him and his family.
“It’s so difficult, but what should we do?” He said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “This is what they want: get us out of our land.”
Like Hathleen, Mohammad Hureini, son of the prominent activist Hafez Hureini, who has faced the headlines for their fight in At-Tuwani in Masafer Yatta, said he was happy that the documentary was providing “good attention to the situation.” But, Hreceini, 20, an activist and university student who studies English literature, added: “It is not enough to stop what Israel is committing.”
Violence against the Palestinians by Israeli settlers and forces has shot himself since the beginning of the war in Gaza. According to Ocha, the United Nations Humanitarian Aid Agency, at least 895 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and Jerusalem east between October 7, 2023 and March 4 of this year. So far this year, 89 Palestinians in the territory have been killed, with 17 of them children under 19.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the six -day war of 1967, with Israeli settlers building and expanding Jewish settlements there that They have been convicted as illegal under international humanitarian law and against the resolutions of the UN Security Council, An Israel position rejects.
Masafar Yatta has been a focus of the Israeli demolitions since the 1980s, after the Israeli army declared that the area was a restricted military zone, calling it “918 shooting zone.” A legal battle of decades saw the displacement and return of the Palestinian families to the area, but that ended in May 2022, when the Court of Justice of Israel authorized the State to demolish villages in the area and expel its residents.
Ocha has called forced evictions resulting from the demolitions a “serious violation of human rights”, while human rights organizations, including Peace based in Israel, now and B zelem have condemned the growing destruction of Israel of the Palestinian houses in the area.
“The Israeli government invents an excuse after another to expel the Palestinians from their lands,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, A NBC News on WhatsApp on Thursday.
Accepting the prize for the best documentary in the Oscars, Adra, who co -directed “no other land,” asked the international community to take serious measures to stop injustice and stop the ethnic cleaning of the Palestinian people. “
His co -director, Abraham, echoed his calls, urging the world to look for a “different” way to follow: “A political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for our people.” Abraham criticized foreign government policies of the United States as “helping to block this path.” Adra and Abraham did not immediately respond to requests for comments from NBC News.
Both Hureini and Hathleen expressed fears for the future of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza with the return to the power of the Trump administration. As one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump rescinded US sanctions to extreme right -wing settlers accused of violence against the Palestinians, and more recently, while seeking to force the end of the war in Gaza, he threatened the life of the Palestinians if the hostages of Hamas are not released.
NBC News contacted the White House to comment, but did not receive an answer.
“We are very worried about Donald Trump because he doesn’t care about the Palestinians,” Hathleen said. “He simply worries about Israel.”
