UMM AL-KHAIR, West Bank – The ramshackle Palestinian hamlet of Umm al-Khair, located in the South Hebron Hills region of the West Bank, is no stranger to hardship and adversity.

Since October, the village has had demolition orders hanging over more than a dozen of its structures. In July, peace activist Awdah Hathaleen, one of the village’s most prominent residents, was shot dead, allegedly by an extremist Jewish settler from the area.

On Monday, the hamlet was once again the scene of strife as the army and police thwarted a planned tree-planting event there organized by Israeli coexistence activists, illustrating what villagers say are ever-growing challenges imposed by their settler neighbors and Israel’s security services that threaten their daily existence beyond the tragedies and large-scale tribulations that usually grab headlines.

These day-to-day difficulties include perpetual harassment and intimidation inside the hardscrabble village, struggles to maintain their agricultural livelihood, and even efforts aimed at stopping them from giving their children a place to play soccer.

“We are upset all the time here,” Khalil Hathaleen, the brother of the slain activist, told The Times of Israel on Monday, complaining of persistent harassment by settlers and security services whenever he takes his sheep and goats out to graze. “They don’t give the kids one minute to be happy. They make life very difficult for everyone.”

The tree-planting activity was organized by Rabbis for Human Rights to mark the Jewish holiday of Tu Bishvat, which celebrates the new year for trees and is a day on which tree-planting ceremonies are traditionally conducted in Israel.

Some 150 olive trees on Umm al-Khair’s land were uprooted by local settlers and security forces in October 2025, and Monday’s tree planting was designed in part to rectify that damage, with plans to plant 300 new trees.

But shortly after 30 or so volunteers with the Rabbis for Human Rights organization arrived at the hamlet, a small IDF force entered the village and ordered the activists to halt the tree-planting event.

An IDF officer and two other soldiers, all masked, informed the activists that a closed military zone order had been imposed on the entire village for 24 hours by the commander of the IDF’s Judea Regional Brigade, meaning that all nonresidents were required to leave.

A police unit also arrived at the scene to enforce the order.

Residents of Umm al-Khair who were accompanying the volunteers alleged that settlers living in illegally constructed homes established just meters from the hamlet had called the army in order to stop the planting activity, a claim that could not be verified.

During the olive harvest season last year, closed military zones were regularly used to stymie Palestinian agricultural activity, barring Palestinian growers and Israeli or international peace activists from accessing the trees. In at least one incident, a settlement municipal authority confirmed that outpost........

© The Times of Israel