URGENT: Demolitions begin in Jordan Valley community after 36 Palestinian families threatened with forced displacement

The demolitions come nearly 10 days after MAP warned that 36 Palestinian families in Abu El Ajaj were facing forced displacement, after more than 40 demolition orders were issued against homes and community structures.

Residents told MAP they had been given a deadline of 9 September to leave and threatened with violence if they refused. So far today, four families have been displaced, and five structures – including homes, two bread ovens, and a community mosque – have been demolished. Residents fear that settlers, backed by Israeli forces, will return to demolish the rest of the community.

Abu El Ajaj is in a remote part of Area C of the West Bank and is among the communities served by MAP’s mobile clinics, with the next clinic visit due on 28 September. In the first six months of 2026, MAP’s mobile clinics reached 201 people in Abu El Ajaj, providing routine healthcare, medicines, mental health support and primary healthcare.

The forced displacement of communities like Abu El Ajaj will further cut people off from essential healthcare. When families are driven from their homes and communities are wiped off the map, the healthcare services MAP provides through its mobile clinics can no longer reach them.

The community of Zanuta in the South Hebron Hills, which was served by MAP, was forcibly displaced in late 2023, with 24 Palestinian households – 141 people, half of them children – forced to leave. In July 2025, Al-Muarajat East in the Jordan Valley was also displaced, with around 120 people from 20 families forced from their homes. Both communities had been served by MAP’s mobile clinics.

Fahd Dueis, a resident living in Abu El Ejaj, told MAP: "They surprised us this morning when we saw the bulldozers are gathered in our community, after we were told that the demolitions were frozen until after the Jewish holidays. Four families have been displaced so far today after their homes were demolished, we also lost two bread ovens and the community mosque that were all razed.

"The systematic and wide demolitions and forced displacement campaign are targeting Palestinians across the West Bank, especially but not limited to Bedouin and herding communities. We are witnessing it more so now as Israeli elections are approaching. The settlers have been attempting to push us out every single day, and the Israeli forces are colluding with them. We are afraid that this is just the start, and that they will come back again to erase the entire community."

Aseel Baidoun, Deputy Director of Advocacy and Communications at MAP, said: “Today, families in Abu El Ajaj are watching bulldozers tear down their homes, knowing they have nowhere else to go. They are being terrorised out of their homes and off their land.

"Families in Abu El Ajaj have faced harassment and threats from armed settlers and lived for weeks under the fear of being driven from their community. Now they are watching bulldozers demolish their homes in front of them. What is happening in Jiftlik is part of the state-backed settler violence driving Palestinians from their land as part of the ethnic cleansing taking place across the West Bank.

[ENDS]

Aseel Baidoun is available to 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 have worked for more than 40 years in the occupied Palestinian territory and in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.