By Zeena Saifi, Jeremy Diamond, Cyril Theophilos, CNN

Ras Ein al-Auja, West Bank (CNN) — Suleiman Ghawanmeh is tired of talking. For over 10 years, he talked himself hoarse until he realized his words could not save his community from being driven out. After his final appeal for help came to nothing, he, too, left.

“I am angry with the world… nobody listens to us… it’s as if we are not human beings,” he told CNN.

His village of Ras Ein al-Auja in the occupied West Bank has now been erased – emptied of its Palestinian residents after a years-long campaign of relentless settler harassment that has intensified over the past two years.

The ongoing violence against what was once the largest shepherding community in the West Bank increased markedly this month, forcing families to abandon their homes, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

Armed and masked settlers, many of them teenagers, descended on the Ras Ein al-Auja daily, residents and activists say, terrorizing the nearly 120 extended families – more than 800 people in total – who lived there. By the end of January, that harassment forced them all to leave.

Ghawanmeh, 44, and his family were the last to go on Sunday.

“We didn’t get displaced because a shepherd or a settler attacked us. No. The issue is bigger than that. The shepherd is a tool – a means of the occupation,” he said.

Ras Ein al-Auja is the 46th shepherding community in the West Bank to be forcibly displaced since October 7th 2023, according to B’Tselem, which calls this a form of “ethnic cleansing.”

In response to the uptick in settler attacks last year, the Israeli military said in a statement that it “views violence of any kind with severity and condemns it, as it harms security in the area.”

But that is not how residents describe the military’s role on the ground.

‘The third Nakba’

Jewish settlers have been harassing the residents of Ras Ein al-Auja since 2010, according to members of the community. After the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 and the ensuing offensive in Gaza, residents say matters only worsened. Settlers have built four new illegal settlement outposts around the village since April 2024, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), closing in on Palestinian homes.

According to residents, activists and videos obtained by CNN, settlers believed to be from those outposts stole or damaged water tanks, compromising the community’s access to water and undermining its livelihood. They cut electricity lines, stole thousands of livestock and vandalized sheep pens and Palestinian property – all with the support or inaction of the Israeli military.

CNN drove up to one of the four outposts to speak with the settlers, but two men there refused to respond to our questions.

“We don’t accept journalists,” one young Israeli settler told us before walking us off the property.

Another settler soon arrived and began filming before calling the police. Both men refused to address questions about their reported harassment of the Palestinians in Ras Ein al-Auja.

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Análisis por Daniel Dale, CNN

Desde sus inicios, este ha sido un Gobierno que no tiene reparos en decir cualquier cosa.

La Casa Blanca liderada por el presidente Donald Trump, quien miente con frecuencia y descaro, rara vez ha mostrado preocupación por la veracidad de los hechos. Y, guiada por la filosofía de Trump de no pedir disculpas y su inclinación por la repetición obstinada, la administración casi nunca ha rectificado ni siquiera las falsedades más extravagantes, incluso después de que hayan sido completamente desmentidas.

Sin embargo, esta última semana ha sido diferente.

Tanto el propio Trump como su Gobierno en general han dado marcha atrás ante las críticas por su retórica inexacta: primero, la minimización por parte del presidente de las contribuciones militares de los países de la OTAN en Afganistán, y luego las acusaciones infundadas de altos funcionarios de la administración contra Alex Pretti, el enfermero que murió a manos de la Patrulla Fronteriza en Minneapolis.

En una entrevista emitida la semana pasada en Fox Business, Trump dijo sobre los países de la OTAN: “Nunca los hemos necesitado. En realidad, nunca les hemos pedido nada. Ya saben, dirán que enviaron algunas tropas a Afganistán o a tal o cual lugar. Y lo hicieron. Se mantuvieron un poco atrás, un poco alejados del frente”.

Pero Estados Unidos sí les ha pedido cosas a los países de la OTAN, en particular ayuda para la guerra en Afganistán tras los atentados terroristas del 11 de septiembre de 2001. Y si bien había algo de verdad en la afirmación de Trump de que los miembros de la OTAN se mantuvieron “un poco atrás”, ya que algunos países de la coalición impusieron restricciones a las actividades de sus tropas en Afganistán, la aseveración de Trump fue incorrecta y ofensivamente generalizada.

Varios países de la OTAN, incluidos el Reino Unido, Dinamarca y Canadá, a los que Trump ha criticado en las últimas semanas, desplegaron tropas para luchar en las provincias más conflictivas de Afganistán, como Helmand y Kandahar, y sufrieron pérdidas considerables. En total, más de 1.000 soldados de países miembros de la OTAN, sin contar a Estados Unidos, murieron en la guerra, según datos de iCasualties.org.

Veteranos de Afganistán y figuras políticas de países de la OTAN, incluido el primer ministro del Reino Unido, Keir Starmer, expresaron su indignación por las declaraciones de Trump. Y si bien la Casa Blanca inicialmente emitió su comentario habitual de que Trump tenía “toda la razón”, el presidente intentó luego aplicar una maniobra inusualmente conciliadora. El sábado publicó en redes sociales un mensaje elogiando los sacrificios de las tropas británicas, señalando que “en Afganistán, murieron 457, muchos resultaron gravemente heridos, y se encontraban entre los mejores guerreros”.

Esto no fue una disculpa explícita, por supuesto, y no mencionó las pérdidas de otros países de la OTAN en Afganistán. Pero fue interpretado amplia y correctamente como una retractación de Trump.

Pretti, un enfermero de unidad de cuidados intensivos admirado por pacientes y colegas en el hospital de Asuntos de Veteranos donde trabajaba, murió tras ser baleado por la Patrulla Fronteriza en Minneapolis el sábado por la mañana después de intervenir cuando un agente empujó a una mujer al suelo. Horas después, altos funcionarios del Gobierno Trump lo describieron sin fundamento como un aspirante a asesino en masa.

En una publicación en redes sociales del sábado, difundida por el vicepresidente J. D. Vance, el secretario general adjunto de la Casa Blanca, Stephen Miller, calificó a Pretti de “asesino” que “intentó matar a agentes federales”; en otra publicación, Miller lo llamó “terrorista nacional”. La secretaria de Seguridad Nacional, Kristi Noem, declaró a los periodistas el sábado: “Esto parece una situación en la que un individuo llegó al lugar para causar el máximo daño a las p

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — Every morning since Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent, Will Stancil has gotten into his car, dialed into a local dispatch call and started driving. As he patrols the streets of his Minneapolis neighborhood, he looks for out-of-state license plates, tinted windows and other telltale signs of federal immigration agents. If he spots one, he follows them.

Stancil is maybe the Twin Cities’ best-known “commuter” — a word that, among the networks of volunteers who are tracking the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, refers to people trailing ICE and Border Patrol agents in their cars.

In Minneapolis, a “commuter” is a type of “observer,” another term that describes the everyday Minnesotans blowing whistles to alert others when ICE is present in immigrant neighborhoods, in addition to filming arrests, raids and killings by federal agents on their phones.

Used since the mid-19th century as a term for someone who routinely travels to and from work, being a “commuter” in Minneapolis these days is another kind of often-tedious obligation. “This has become, functionally, my part-time job for the last few weeks,” Stancil, a local lawyer, activist and niche-famously combative online poster, says. Beyond drawing attention to federal agents on the ground, he has used his commuting to draw international media attention to the ubiquity of the agents’ activity, day after day.

Patty O’Keefe, a Minneapolis resident and fellow regular “commuter,” thinks the term captures a more specific action than “observer” does. “I think it’s trying to encapsulate that we’re observing but we’re also moving. We’re also covering a lot of ground,” she adds.

It’s unclear who coined the term or when it first came into use — O’Keefe first heard “commute” in this context about two weeks ago in her neighborhood group chats, while Stancil says it was already part of the lingo when he joined rapid response efforts. Stancil suspects it originated in Chicago, like other organizing tactics being deployed against ICE in Minneapolis. (One rapid response group in Pilsen, a Chicago neighborhood, told CNN they weren’t familiar with the term, though they couldn’t speak for other groups in the city.)

“Commuters” alert neighbors to ICE activity, take down the names of anyone they see being taken into federal custody and document the aggressive behavior of agents, Stancil explains.

“Everyone’s seen Alex Pretti get murdered, and they’ve seen Renee Good, but every day there are dozens of incidents of people getting beaten up, tear gassed, windows smashed, all of it,” he adds. “The only reason the world knows about this stuff, to a large extent, is they can’t get out of their car without a bunch of observers descending on them and filming everything.”

“Commuting” isn’t entirely unlike going to work. Some “commutes” can be exceedingly uneventful, with hours passing by without a single confirmed ICE or Border Patrol sighting. And just as you don’t really know the other drivers on the road who are stuck in traffic with you, Stancil mostly doesn’t know the identities of other “commuters.”

“You’re in this organization of people that is really dedicated to this mission,” he says. “There’s some people that I would almost literally trust with my life, and I also don’t h

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