Israeli settlers are driving Palestinian shepherds from their grazing lands

Key points

• Settler attacks in the Jordan Valley have forced growing numbers of Palestinian communities to flee their villages.
• Mukhlis Masa’id of Khirbet Yarza in the occupied West Bank has lived in a state of sorrow since settlers intensified their attacks on his Jordan Valley community three years ago.
• He and other local Palestinians have seen settlers destroy their crops, attack their homes, and assault shepherds and farmers working the grazing lands around the village, with growing ferocity and incidence.
• Fourteen families, about 100 Palestinians in total, called this region home until increasing violent settler activity forced them to consider their future here.
• Early this year, locals decided they had had enough with the near-daily settler attacks, so they gathered their surviving livestock and left the village.