(Photo credit: Issam Rimawi/Anadolu)
The Cradle
SEP 19, 2026
Residents say a trench dug across the final route into Khirbet Ras al-Ahmar seeks to forcibly displace the entire community
On 19 September, Israeli occupation forces trenched over the last remaining road into the Palestinian village of Khirbet Ras al-Ahmar, southeast of Tubas in the northern occupied West Bank, leaving 47 Palestinian families under total siege.
The trench cut off the last remaining route to the village, a single rough path only suitable for livestock and farm tractors, after the Israeli military had spent over two months blocking all other roads, according to resident Thaer Basharat.
Basharat said the stranglehold on the village has been tightening for roughly three years, and the latest closure has turned it into a “cage” hemmed in by trenches, walls, and military zones.
“The 47 families in the village rely on livestock farming and are now unable to bring in their basic necessities or sheep feed,” he said.
Basharat said roughly 90 percent of the approximately 360,000 dunams that once served as grazing land for the village’s herders have been seized or declared off-limits, leaving its farmers in dire straits.
“The Israeli pressure aims to forcibly displace the entire community from the village,” he said.
The village’s enclosure comes as Israel presses ahead with the “Crimson Thread,” a military barrier of patrol roads, trenches, and earth embankments that wall off the eastern flank of the occupied West Bank, as part of its broader campaign of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians.
In August, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli forces filled in three artesian wells in Ras al-Ahmar, wrecked about 300 meters of water pipeline, and demolished three livestock shelters, further strangling a community whose survival depends on water and grazing for its herds.
Israeli army and settler pogroms against Palestinians and their property have escalated across the occupied West Bank since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza in October 2023.
Israeli War Minister Israel Katz has threatened to unleash an “all-out war” on the occupied West Bank, targeting not only resistance factions but also the Palestinian Authority (PA), its senior officials, and its affiliated bodies.
Katz said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered the Israeli military to prepare the campaign should PA security forces launch, or be about to launch, an attack similar to 7 October, vowing to “quickly bring about their complete defeat.”
Since the start of 2025, the Israeli army has forcibly displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians from West Bank refugee camps and demolished hundreds of homes, while illegal settlements expanded rapidly under Israeli government legislation as part of Israel’s campaign of annexation of the occupied territory.
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