Imagine this: you and your family live on land that you’ve owned for decades, maybe even close to a century. You live a simple peaceful life in a small village within a community of people you’ve known for as long as you can remember. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, build their own village right on your village’s land, not like neighbours though, rather they are intent on displacing and replacing you. They build their homes on your land with the sanction of the government and the protection of the military.
Now there’s barbed wire where your sheep used to graze. Now you live in the shadow — literally — of homes that look like they were transplanted from 21st Century America to your rustic village. All while you and your fellow villagers lack basic necessities like land to grow food, water and electricity.
Still, you would be one of the lucky ones because your home, humble as it may seem, remains standing and for now you are still allowed to live in it. Almost weekly, you watch government forces demolish houses, confiscate property, and arrest your neighbours.
That’s what’s happening right now to Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank. It’s been happening for years.
The West Bank was occupied by the Israeli army during the 1967 war. International law forbids countries from settling on lands that they occupy as a result of a conflict if there’s no treaty or agreement in place about the transfer of control of that land. But Israel that interpretation of international law and asserts its rights in the west bank, actively promoting what the rest of the wrold sees as illegal settlements on land taken from Palestinians, often with the support of the United States.
All Palestinians in the occupied territories live under Israeli military rule, even in those areas that are nominally under the political control of the Palestinian Authority. Israel cotinues to confiscate what little Palestinian land is left under false pretences every year.
Now, according to the Paletinian Bureau of Statistics, as of 2019 more than 688,000 settlers live in 150 settlements which are spread disruptively across the west bank and east Jerusalem.
The man right here is al-Haj Suliman al-Hazalin known locally in the South Hebron Hills as Haj Suliman. He was a shepherd and a well-known anti-occupation activist. Suliman was a small man with no weapons. He resisted the occupation through civil disobedience. when Israeli bulldozers destroyed the homes in his neighbourhood he stood in peaceful defiance with a Palestinian flag and his shepherd’s staff.
Two fellow acrivists from Suliman’s village wrote in an article for 972 Magazine, quote: “Haj Suliman is an anti-occupation activist in his late 60s, who we have known our whole lives. Every time we go to his house in Umm al-Khair, he greets us with a cup of tea and a smile. Everyone in the South Hebron Hills knows him well — especially the Israeli occupation soldiers.”
I met Haj Suliman on my last trip to Israel, Gaza and the west bank at the end of 2019. In this photo, we’re standing right in front of the village’s communal bread oven. Just feet away, behind us, an Israeli settlement encroaches on the livelihood. The new Israeli settlers did not appreciate the smoke that wafted from that bread oven into their settlement next door. So they sent the authorities to demolish one of the only food sources in the village. Israeli soldiers literally destroyed a bread oven to satisfy illegal settlers.
But the harassment continues. The goal was, and always is, to get Palestinians to leave the land, allowing more Israeli settlers to populate it.
And it came to a head days ago. ON the afternoon of January 5th, Israeli forces entered Haj Suliman’s village of Umm al-Khair and began confiscating unregistered Palestinian cars. Haj Suliman did what he had done for decades. He peacefully resisted. Then he was run over by an Israeli tow truck under contract to the Israeli police. Haj Suliman was on the ground, battered and bleeding. Israeli officials say Suliman charged at the truck. Witnesses say, and there were many of them, say otherwise.
What happened next was the real tragedy. Witnesses say the tow truck drive and their police escort simply fled the rural village. They did not render aid to Haj Suliman. They did not even call for an ambulance.
The protester al-Haj Suliman al-Hazalin never emerged from his coma and he died of his injuries this week. Suliman was a man with little to his name except for his land, his village, and his ability to stand up to an illegal occupation. This small man, with just his words and his staff, was a thorn in the side of the Israeli occupation because he had become a symbol of the resistance and an emblem of that Israeli occupation.
Last modified: December 11, 2025