Each morning, the first thing Alaa Hathleen does is anxiously check his WhatsApp messages with a single question on his mind: “Who will be homeless today?”
Just over two weeks ago, it was his turn. Early on Feb. 18, Hathleen, 25, was still asleep at his family home in the village of Umm Al-Kheir on the outskirts of Masafer Yatta in the Israeli-occupied West Bank when his mother raced into the room, terrified. Israeli soldiers and excavators were outside, she yelled.
Less than half an hour later, they were standing outside their home, watching in horror as an excavator tore through the building, crushing its walls to rubble and snapping its metal roof in half.
The Israel Defense Forces said Hathleen's home was "built illegally in a closed military area," and that it was demolished "in accordance with the law."
Masafer Yatta’s landscape of rolling hills and small hamlets gained renewed international attention when “No Other Land,” a documentary by Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli investigative journalist, won an Oscar on Sunday.
The film highlighted the violence and abuses committed by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians in Masafer Yatta — but Hathleen said he feared it could “open the gates of hell” for those who lived there, worried that Israeli settlers and forces might increase their attacks in angry retaliation for the film.
Hathleen said he believed it was important to highlight the reality Palestinians face in the occupied West Bank, but in the weeks since the documentary was announced as an Academy Award nominee, he said there had been fresh violence in the area, with Amnesty International warning last week that another village nearby was under “imminent threat of forcible transfer.”
Hathleen, a physical therapist and activist, now sleeps in a large tent outside his brother’s house with other relatives. They feared rebuilding their home only to have it torn down again by Israeli forces, while the threat of a violent settler attack hangs over him and his family.
“It’s so hard, but what should we do?” he said in a phone interview on Thursday. “This is what they want — to kick us out of our land.”
Like Hathleen, Mohammad Hureini, the son of prominent activist Hafez Hureini, who has made headlines for his fight to remain in At-Tuwani in Masafer Yatta, said he was glad the documentary was bringing “good attention to the situation.” But, Hureini, 20, an activist and university student studying English literature, added: “It’s not enough to stop what Israel is committing.”
Violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers and forces has soared since the start of the war in Gaza. According to OCHA, the United Nations’ humanitarian aid agency, at least 895 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between Oct. 7, 2023, and March 4 of this year. So far this year, 89 Palestinians in the territory have been killed, with 17 of them children under the age of 19.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six Day War, with Israeli settlers building and expanding Jewish settlements there that have been condemned as illegal under international humanitarian law and counter to U.N. Security Council resolutions, a charge Israel rejects.
Masafar Yatta has been a focus of Israeli demolitions since the 1980s, after the Israeli military declared the area a restricted military zone, dubbing it “Firing Zone 918.” A decadeslong legal battle saw the displacement and return of Palestinian families to the area, but that ended in May 2022, when Israel’s High Court of Justice authorized the state to demolish villages in the area and expel its residents.
OCHA has called forced evictions resulting from demolitions a “gross violation of human rights,” while human rights organizations including Israel-based Peace Now and B’Tselem have condemned Israel’s mounting destruction of Palestinian homes in the area.
“The Israeli government concocts one excuse after the other to expel Palestinians from their land,” Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, told NBC News over WhatsApp on Thursday.
Accepting the award for best documentary at the Oscars, Adra, who co-directed “No Other Land,” called on the international community to “take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.”
His co-director, Abraham, echoed his calls, urging the world to seek a “different” way forward: “a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both our people.” Abraham went on to criticize the U.S. government’s foreign policies as “helping to block this path.” Adra and Abraham did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NBC News.
Both Hureini and Hathleen expressed fears for the future of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza with the Trump administration’s return to power. As one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump rescinded U.S. sanctions on far-right settlers accused of violence against Palestinians, and more recently, as he looks to force an end to the war in Gaza, threatened the lives of Palestinians if hostages held by Hamas are not released.
NBC News reached out to the White House for comment, but did not receive a response.
“We are so worried about Donald Trump because he doesn’t care about the Palestinians,” Hathleen said. “He just cares about Israel.”
