“I resist so that I remain.” — Ahmad Al-Hathaleen
Every day, Ahmad wakes up and looks toward the other side of the lands of Khirbet Um al-Kheir, lands that Israel occupied to establish the settlement of Carmael.
Ahmad Al-Hathaleen, a father of three, is one of the residents of the Bedouin community of Um al-Kheir in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.
Ahmad and the other residents of the community face daily challenges from settlers and Israeli occupation forces: assaults, harassment, demolitions, and even death threats.
Ahmad asks: “what is my future? What is the future of my children? Where are we heading? What can I do so that the settlers stop their attacks and just leave me in peace?”
In Um al-Kheir, thirty-seven families—around three hundred people, including Ahmad’s—live under the threat of expulsion, violence, or arrest, after having already been displaced from their original lands during the Nakba of 1948 and finding a home in Khirbet Um al-Kheir.
Ahmad has spent thirty years on this land, carrying with him the memories of childhood with his family and cousins. He says:
“If I leave the village for even just an hour, I feel like something is missing and I start longing for it. So how could I ever leave it forever?”
