On Sunday morning, 15 March 2026, two families, numbering 11 people, including one child, left their homes in the community of Khirbet Samrah and moved to the Tubas area. The departure followed many months of daily harassment and assaults by settlers, which included repeated raids on residential compounds, damage to agricultural fields and an outpost tent pitched at a distance of about 150 meters from the community.
The settlers, who come from outposts established a few kilometers away from the community and from nearby settlements, have been documented raiding the community on horseback and on an ATV, chasing after the flock and the shepherds in the few pasturelands the community has left, near the residential compounds and, in one case, on 14 November 2025, even pushing one of the residents, a 70-year-old man. On 5 January 2026, three settlers, one of them masked, invaded the community and unsuccessfully attempted to break through a livestock enclosure fence and steal sheep. They then lit a campfire a few meters away from the enclosure and stayed there for several hours.
In early February 2026, matters took a turn for the worse after settlers, coming mainly from the direction of two outposts, Uri Cohen’s Havat Nof Gil’ad, and Asael Kornitz’s Havat Eretz Shemesh, set up an outpost tent about 130 meters from the community’s residential compound, near the road leading to Um Zuqa.
The settlers brought a herd of about 50 cows into the community from the direction of Kornitz’s outpost, grazed them in the residents’ sown fields, and damaged about 40 dunam (1 dunam = 0.1 hectares) of wheat and barley crops. In the following weeks, the settlers continued grazing the cows in residents’ private fields, invading the community daily on foot and on ATVs, with dogs, chasing after shepherds and flocks, often forcing them out of pasturelands. Settlers who stayed overnight in the outpost tent would shine strong lights at the community’s residents for hours and play loud music in the small hours of the night and early morning. In addition, the settlers took over at least two of the community’s water cisterns, which had been used for irrigating the fields and watering the flocks.
On 26 February 2026, the military detained one of the community’s residents for three hours, after he physically blocked settlers from breaking into his home. The soldiers made him sit outside in the rain, apparently at one of the military bases in the area, handcuffed and blindfolded. In the afternoon of 14 March 2026, the Israel Police arrested three brothers from the community, after settlers who had raided it and tried to break into the livestock enclosures claimed that one of the brothers had hit one of them. The police took the three brothers to the Ma’ale Adumim police station, where they were questioned and released that same night after bail of 1,000 NIS (~ 340 USD) was posted for each of them.
This is the fourth wave of displacement in the community, which, until October 2023, had been home to 16 families, numbering a total of 112 people, including 42 children. In July 2025, following the third wave of displacement, four families remained in the community, numbering 32 people, including eight children, all from one extended family. Today, only two families remain in the community, numbering 20 people, seven of them children. The families, who live on private land that they or the extended Daraghmeh family own, continue to suffer from relentless expulsion attempts by the settlers and the state.