KHIRBET AL-MARAJIM, occupied West Bank — The metal door of the Masallam family home still bears the dents from a settler’s axe. Inside, the smell of freshly made cheese hangs beneath a stone-domed ceiling. Mattresses line the circular room, spread across carpets on the hard floor. Prayer beads hang from nails beside the damaged door.
On this particular evening, about 20 people are arranged in a circle — four generations of Masallams, plus relatives and a couple of friends — as young children pass small glasses of mint tea around the cosy den. “Quiet, everyone! Let Hajja speak!” called out Thabet, 24, grinning from across the circle. Hajja Latifa, 66, adjusts her white hijab and sits up slightly. “In the days of old, the world was safe,” she says quietly.
That was before her husband was killed. Before the arson. Before the kidnappings. Before the beatings and theft and loss of livelihood. Before the Israeli settlers came. In all, 15 people live across three single-room homes on the family compound, though relatives and friends come most evenings for tea, arghila and conversation, swelling the circle further.
The Masallam compound is one of only two full households occupied year-round in all of Khirbet al-Marajim, a sparsely populated hamlet of rolling hills and an archaeological area that has been inhabited for several millennia. Al-Marajim lies a kilometre southwest of the main Palestinian town and population centre in the area, Duma, in the central West Bank, which sits on a scenic mountain ridge above the Jordan Valley. As friends and relatives constantly cycle through the compound, no family in al-Marajim is as rooted to the land — or as visible a presence — as the Masallams, who for generations have spent their lives farming and grazing on the small hill overlooking the wadi below.
“If they manage to displace our family, they control the pastures,” said Thabet. “That’s why they focus on targeting this house. They want the entire area — and if we fall, the rest do.” During settler attacks and military incursions, Thabet is the family’s anchor. He works the phones — calling relatives in Duma, the Palestinian liaison and Israeli solidarity activists whenever settlers or soldiers arrive.
The family’s patriarch, Musa, was killed in 2016 when a settler struck him with a motorcycle. The settler was never held accountable. On March 14, 2025, about 30 settlers attacked the home, smashing windows, setting fire to a car and a house. Eighteen-month-old Musa and six-month-old Mira were locked in a room; settlers broke in and abducted them, but young men from Duma chased the attackers and found the babies in a field. The Israeli army arrived half an hour later and watched the settlers leave. A soldier punched 14-year-old Leen Masallam in the face. No one has been held accountable.
“The army is with the settler,” Thabet said. “They work together. The army doesn’t want us to stay here, either.” The family now lives in constant fear, unable to sleep outside or graze their flocks freely. Despite the trauma, they try to maintain their traditions: Nayef reads the Quran each morning; Hajja and Maysoon milk the sheep and sing folk songs. “Laughter and joy come naturally to us,” Thabet says. But the old life of safety and harvest celebrations is gone.
Source: www.aljazeera.com