One morning, the Hathaleen family of Umm al-Khair discovered that their outhouse had fallen within the illegally expanding boundaries of the nearby Carmel settlement. Then the IDF made things even worse. The family now has to cross the road to use the neighbors’ toilet
By Gideon Levy & Alex Levac, reposted from Haaretz , July 11, 2026
The way to the Hathaleen family’s outhouse is blocked. The structure is inaccessible. A wooden swing and an Israeli flag that settlers brought in the dead of night this week are denying access to their toilet. It’s a surreal sight – flag, outhouse and swing, as seen from a window in the house.
It’s hard to think of a greater denigration of the national flag than to use it as a barrier for people on the way to a toilet. But for the thugs in the settlement of Carmel, anything goes, including debasement of the flag.
In the past few nights the settlers have placed dozens more flags between and en route to the homes in the village of Umm el-Khair, in the South Hebron Hills. A road sign directing visitors to the village is now also covered by a flag. In fact, thousands of Israeli flags now fly on all the roads in the West Bank, as though the settlers are declaring their sovereignty in the occupied territory. Perhaps they are convinced that more flags mean more sovereignty.
In any event, there were probably fewer flags in the Independence Day torch-lighting ceremony on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem this year, than there are along the road to Umm el-Khair. But the settlers have gone a step further, in all their chutzpah: Flags are also now flying between the homes in this Palestinian village, which has stood here far longer than the illegal settlement that has encroached on its land.
“Did you see how many flags we have?” asks Eid Hathaleen, a local activist, with a bitter smile. “It’s the Independence Day of Umm el-Khair. For us it’s not so terrible. It’s a piece of cloth. Our thoughts are more about the neighbors, who will never stop causing damage. They always want everything. Like a little kid who has everything from Mom and Dad – and only wants more.”
Now, when Salem Hathaleen – he and Eid are part of the same extended family – or his wife and children want to relieve themselves, they have to cross the road and ask to use the neighbors’ toilet, day or night. They live in fear of the violent settler, their uninvited neighbor, whose illegal home is a mere 20 meters (65 ft.) from their house, stubbornly looming over them.
This week the situation got even worse. The Israel Defense Forces – yes, the very same – imposed a “closed military zone” order on the Hathaleen family’s outhouse and adjacent animal pen. The IDF is apparently the world’s first army to declare a toilet a closed military zone.
A neighborhood of 12 spanking new “caravillas” – deluxe mobile homes – sprouted up over the past few months next to the village, as part of the invasive expansion of the settlement of Carmel. The Jerusalem District Court issued an order for evacuation of the mobile homes and their inhabitants, but it was canceled – yet another low point to which the Israeli judicial system has stooped these days.
People in Umm el-Khair think there aren’t enough settlers to populate the new “neighborhood,” lying practically inside their village, so they are moving people from the older part of Carmel to the new area, in a brash display of ownership.
Eid Hathaleen: “Imagine that the court issued an order last October to evacuate them, and the brigade commander and the company commander and the police commander arrived and had coffee with them – and did nothing to execute the order. In late April, the court canceled it, because there is no one to implement it.
“After the order was canceled,” he continues, “they brought in six more caravillas that very night, and on the following night hooked them up to the electricity grid and water supply, laid down some asphalt and made themselves a road. They put on a show, placed bicycles at the entrance to the houses, so people will think that someone is living in the caravillas, but they move from house to house. Imagine if it was a Palestinian doing that.”
Eid is 42 and has five daughters. His father, Suleiman, was killed here in 2022 when he was run over by a police tow truck, whether maliciously or not. The driver left without providing first aid; the incident was never investigated.
“We live on the margins of the settlers. Every place in Masafer Yatta [the region in which Umm al-Khair is located] lives on the margins, and now the situation has deteriorated even further. The settlers come, stick their fingers in our eye, as it were, and dig around. I’ll go get Salem and Ikhlas [his neighbors], who will tell you how they sleep at night.”
Salem Hathaleen takes us to his house, which all but abuts the mobile home of the thuggish settler, A., the source of all the villagers’ woes. Salem is 52 and has 11 children from two wives. He worked in Israel all his life, until October 7. Some years ago, long after he built his home and the pen and the outhouse, Israeli authorities apparently declared them to be part of the settlement of Carmel, but no one told him about it. Suddenly he discovered that the structures are located within the “Blue Line” that arbitrarily demarcates the property of the settlements.
Salem had owned a flock of 65 sheep and goats, but was compelled to sell almost all of them because he has nowhere to pasture them anymore, since the settler-invaders took over that land as well. He has only three goats left, whose milk the children, three of them under the age of 3, drink every morning.
And then came the events of last week, he explains: “Things like that never happened before. I am ashamed to say it, but how in a democratic country in 2026 can things like this happen? How can an adult person knock on the door of the toilet while a woman is using it and remove her from there by force? Have you ever heard anything like this? Has that happened anywhere the world? It happened to Ikhlas.”
Ikhlas, 38, is Salem’s second wife. One day last week, at about 7:30 in the evening, she entered the toilet, a few meters from her house. A., the thug, showed up at the door and knocked repeatedly until sheer fear forced Ikhlas to come out.
This week, Ikhlas remembers that the settler, whose full name is known to everyone around here, shouted, “Yallah, ruhi, ruhi” (“Get out of here”) and some other things she didn’t understand. She says it’s embarrassing for her to use the toilet of the neighbors across the road. Especially at night. The children also feel ashamed.
Nasser Nawaj’ah, a field researcher for B’Tselem –The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, tells us later that for the Bedouin – the residents of Umm al-Khair are from the Jahalin tribe – such an invasion of a woman’s privacy is considered to be a very grave offense.
“It’s something that’s never happened in the whole world – neither in America or in hell,” Salem declares.
But that wasn’t the end of it. This week he wasn’t permitted to approach the pen in order to feed his few remaining goats because, as mentioned, the army had determined that it was part of a closed military zone. For 48 hours, Nasser was prohibited from giving them food and water; when the first closure order expired, an officer allowed him to access the pen, but only for five minutes. The order was then extended for another 24 hours, and for 24 more after that.
A., the intruder in question, informed the authorities that Salem had new goats and was not allowed to bring them into his pen. Salem insists that they were the same animals that remained from flock, after the settlers began to invade the area. In addition, the settlers falsely alleged that their pen is new, when in fact it was built 30 years ago.
In response to Haaretz’s query, the IDF Spokesperson’s Office this week explained the background to the issuance of the order closing off the outhouse and the pen: “Over the weekend, forces of the IDF rushed to the area of the village of Umm el-Khair, in the [territory under the purview of the] Judea Brigade, in the wake of a complaint about friction in the area. Afterward, in order to disperse all those involved, a temporary military-zone closure order was issued. Additionally, in accordance with said temporary order, access to the animals and to the toilet was not denied, and it was also made clear to the residents that in order to allow them to continue to care for the animals, they would be allowed access to the place.”
This week, the settlers also laid down razor wire around the pen and yard of the house. The worst attacks occur on Friday evenings, immediately after the settlers’ Shabbat evening prayers, Salem relates. They showed up last Friday again.
“A lot of them came, maybe 30, maybe 50, children too, and they brought a coiled wire fence and closed off the outhouse,” says Salem, who then summoned the police. “Anywhere else in the world, when a person is in trouble, he calls the police to help him. But what did the police and army tell me? ‘Take out the goats.’ Where will I take them? Afterward, the army announced that from midnight this would be a closed military zone for 48 hours. And after two days they came again and extended the order.” The settlers also broke some furniture and piled up the pieces between the house and the toilet.
The view from the room of Salem’s daughter, Sarah, who’s 17 and trying to study for her matriculation exams, is surreal. A black goat peeks out from behind the bars of the pen, hungry and thirsty. How can she study, her father wonders, with all this going on outside.
The settlers planted the flag outside the toilet last Sunday night. Salem isn’t even thinking about removing it. Umm el-Khair’s tiny cemetery, of eight graves, which is located nearby, has also been taken over by the settlers and locals cannot enter.
For the past 10 days, the family has barely slept, Salem says. “I am waiting for the army and the police. They will take me to jail, they will give me food and water and a bathroom, and that will be that. End of story. Women are being prevented from using the toilet, goats are kept from eating, and the settlers’ tractor keeps working. They do what they want. I can’t do a thing.
“Take a picture of the toilet, take a picture of the pen and a picture of the tractor – and that picture will say everything,” he tells us. “If you had seen my children this morning, you would cry. Any person with a heart would cry. They don’t have milk in the morning. All I want is quiet. That’s not such a big thing.”
In May, human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, who represents the residents of Umm al-Khair, published an article in Haaretz, which concluded: “And yet I ask: Isn’t there one righteous person in Carmel? If there is, speak up.”
No one has spoken up.
Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist for Haaretz.
Alex Levac is an Israeli photojournalist for Haaretz.
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