Exodus at Palestinian villages

Palestinian shepherd Mustafa standing in the ruins of the West Bank Bedouin village of al-Baqa where residents fled in July after settlers established an outpost a stone’s throw from the village in June. — AP

THE Palestinian hamlet of al-Qabun in the central occupied West Bank was silent – the grazing fields for sheep deserted, the empty schoolhouse locked, the makeshift homes left as steel carcasses.

The last families living there had packed up, driven from their homes of nearly three decades by what they said was a year of intensified attacks and harassment by armed Jewish settlers living in unauthorised outposts on neighbouring hilltops.