"Like an electric shock": Khan Al-Ahmar communities face forced displacement as Israeli authorities open West Bank settlement tenders

This step would consolidate Israeli control over the corridor linking East Jerusalem to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement bloc – an outcome widely recognised by governments as undermining the viability of a contiguous Palestinian state and violating international law. In a joint statement last week, the UK and partner governments warned that companies involved in such settlement activity may face “legal and reputational consequences.”

Palestinian families in Khan Al-Ahmar now face imminent forced displacement after Israeli authorities moved last week to revive long-standing demolition orders against the community. Khan Al-Ahmar is one of 18 Bedouin and herding communities in the path of the plan. Around 4,000 Palestinians across the 18 communities could lose their homes and land.

Abu Khamees, a community leader in Khan Al-Ahmar, has lived under the shadow of demolition orders for years. Nothing, he says, prepared him for this.

“Families here are not prepared to leave. We had been living in limbo for years given a temporary halt on the demolition order. The decision for imminent forced displacement was like an electric shock to us. People are anxious about where to go with their children as well as how to access essential services like health and education. People here have already been suffering because reaching healthcare has been extremely difficult, with interrupted services due to movement restrictions and checkpoints.

Israeli settlement expansion is compounded by escalating settler violence, which forms part of a broader coercive environment driving the displacement of Palestinians and entrenching de facto annexation. In a single week (12-18 May 2026), settlers carried out more than 50 attacks, including arson targeting homes, farmland and a mosque.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) , 870 attacks have been recorded across more than 220 communities so far this year – an average of six per day. Since January 2025, settler violence and related access restrictions have displaced thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank, with at least 38-45 rural and herding communities fully or largely emptied.

Aseel Baidoun, MAP’s Deputy Director of Advocacy and Communications based in the West Bank, said: “The threatened destruction of Khan al-Ahmar exposes the hollowness of years of international handwringing over illegal settlements. Governments have spent decades calling E1 a red line, warning it would shatter any prospects of a viable Palestinian state, while doing virtually nothing to curb Israel's impunity."

MAP calls on the UK government to follow in the Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia, and Ireland’s footsteps and end trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This move, backed by 119 MPs, is consistent with the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 ruling that Israel’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank is unlawful.

Nearly two years on from the ICJ’s advisory opinion, the UK government has still not published its legal review or set out any concrete steps to implement it.

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Aseel Baidoun, Deputy Director of Advocacy and Communications, based in Ramallah is available for interview on request. Please contact the press office to arrange at: [email protected] or +44 (0) 203 869 1310.

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) works for a future where every Palestinian has access to a comprehensive, effective and locally-led system of healthcare, and the full realisation of their rights to health and dignity. We work in the occupied Palestinian territory and in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.