In this West Bank village, Israel won’t let Palestinians visit their dead

Seventy meters from the cemetery of Umm Safa, north of Ramallah, Marwan Sabbah stands in grief with a single wish: to lay a headstone on the grave of his father, Nimer Sabti Arqoub, who died on February 1, 2026. Between the village’s only cemetery and its people lies the settler bypass road known as Route 450, a nearby outpost, and settlers who lie in wait for anyone who tries to reach it. Marwan does not want his father’s grave to go unmarked. His father taught generations of students in Umm Safa, defended the village’s land, and held fast to his own plot until his last breath, plowing it, planting it, and harvesting its olives. Marwan wants people to remember his father as someone with a name, a life, and a history that mattered. But Marwan’s story isn’t just about the need to mark his father’s grave. It is about whether the people of Umm Safa can reach the cemetery at all — to bury their dead in the only cemetery they have, or to visit the graves of their loved ones. “If someone in the village dies, there is nowhere to bury them,” Marwan Sabbah, head of the Umm Safa village council, told Mondoweiss . Umm Safa, a small village of around 750 people and no more than 4,800 dunams (480 hectares) of land, today holds just 100 dunams (10 hectares) — the land its houses stand on. Israeli settlements have swallowed the rest. Sabbah gazes at the cemetery from a distance and falls silent for a moment, overcome by his inability to reach it. “I will try once, twice, ten times,” he said. “We will not abandon the cemetery where our grandparents, and their grandparents, are buried. We will bury our dead nowhere but here. The truth is, we have no other option.” Umm Safa was completely cut off from its cemetery in August 2026, less than two months after villagers last reached it to bury Raed Mahmoud Arqoub, a young man who died of cancer. Since then, settlers have kept residents away from their only cemetery. They have seized all the land around it on the village’s southern side, an area known as Wadi al-Zaytoun — the last of Umm Safa’s farmland still in its people’s hands — and set up a new outpost there. Outposts on the doorstep Umm Safa used to be hemmed in by two settlements: Ateret to the east and Halamish to the west. But after October 7, 2023, settlers established six new outposts on the village’s land, surrounding it on all sides. The Israeli army, meanwhile, has sealed the village’s main entrance with a military gate, blocking passage for the past three years. To understand the settler siege tightening around Umm Safa, we climbed with Sabbah onto the roof of the village council building, which sits in the middle of the village. From there, one of the six outposts is clearly visible, creeping toward the houses — no more than 50 meters away. “Umm Safa has become completely cut off from the world,” Sabbah said. Umm Safa, West Bank, September 2026. (Photo by Shatha Hammad) Indeed, getting to Umm Safa was long and difficult. The village used to be about 20 minutes from Ramallah. Today the trip takes more than an hour, looping around the surrounding villages — from the Rawabi area to Deir al-Sudan, then through Wadi Ajjul to the village of Ajjul, and finally to Umm Safa. “The situation in Umm Safa is difficult, and everything the settlers do confirms there are plans to displace its people,” Sabbah said. “The suffering here is real, and it gets worse by the day.” In the southern part of the village, settlers have set fire to most of the homes. Residents there now fortify their houses with fences and high walls, hoping to keep the settlers out. In the eastern part of the village, residents have been completely cut off from the rest of Umm Safa since settlers set up an outpost there. On Jabal al-Ras, north of the village, settler caravans now stand just 10 to 15 meters from the village’s only school. It is from this outpost that settlers launch their daily attacks on Umm Safa’s homes and residents. “Jabal al-Ras doesn’t matter only to Umm Safa,” Sabbah said. “The mountain overlooks all 30 villages northwest of Ramallah, and from the top you can see the Palestinian coast.” “The settlers now put an outpost between one outpost and the next,” Sabbah added. “The goal isn’t only to expand onto the land. It’s constant pressure to displace the entire village, which is now almost completely besieged.” Five young men from the village who were about to marry have had to move out and rent elsewhere, because there is no room left in Umm Safa to live or build. “The goal of all this settlement activity is to create a large settlement bloc connecting Ateret in the east with Halamish in the west,” Sabbah said. “A plan has been put forward for 3,000 settlement units between the villages of Jibiya and Umm Safa to start carrying out this project.” Despite all this, Sabbah is defiant. “Umm Safa belongs to its people, and we will never leave, no matter what plans they draw up,” he said. “We are holding firm on our land and will not abandon it. This is the culture we were raised on: a culture of sumud , not surrender.” Umm Safa, West Bank, September 2026. (Photo by Shatha Hammad) Back from the U.S. to defend his village Khaled Allan Qaraan owned a farm of about seven-and-a-half dunams (about two quarters of a hectare), with a house and a variety of fruit trees, which he had spent some $250,000 developing. In June 2024, settlers descended on the farm with heavy machinery. They demolished the house and the surrounding walls and uprooted every tree. Qaraan holds U.S. citizenship, but it did not protect him from the settlers. “I contacted the U.S. embassy from the first day, but it did nothing,” Qaraan told Mondoweiss . “I hold it fully responsible for my huge loss, and I hold them responsible for this racist treatment of me as a Palestinian citizen, while a Zionist American is given all his rights.” Despite everything, Qaraan now spends hours at a time planning how to rebuild his farm. He has not lost hope, and he has not given up for a moment. “No matter how long it takes, my land will come back to me,” he said. “This is my will to my children: to carry on my path and reclaim our land. I am a son of Palestine. I breathe this soil, and I can never leave it.” Stealing livestock In an old house near the entrance to Umm Safa, about 50 meters from one of the outposts, Amneh Arqoub, 70, sits guarding her home. She expects the settlers to attack at any moment. About a month ago, they raided her home and stole four of her sheep. Amneh is the mother of four children with intellectual disabilities, one of whom died a few months ago. “Two settlers came, went into the pen, took out four sheep, and stole them,” Amneh told Mondoweiss . “When people from the village came and tried to get them back, Israeli soldiers arrived to protect the settlers and stopped the villagers from getting close.” One of the soldiers, Amneh says, gave her a choice: give up the four sheep, or have her entire flock confiscated. “I had to back down, afraid they would take the whole flock,” she said. “It’s our only source of income.” Despite the danger that surrounds her and her children at all times, Amneh refuses to leave her home, or Umm Safa. “It’s impossible for us to leave Umm Safa,” she said. “We will stay in our homes our whole lives, until we die.” Umm Safa, West Bank, September 2026. (Photo by Shatha Hammad) What has the Palestinian Authority done for Umm Safa? For all that Umm Safa endures every day, and for all its residents’ steadfastness through a siege now in its third year, no one has done anything for them — not the Palestinian Authority, and not humanitarian organizations. The village has been left alone to face settler attacks and attempts to displace it, day after day. “Umm Safa needs a kindergarten,” Sabbah said. “It needs a solar energy project, paved roads, more classrooms at the school, an emergency center, and a civil defense team. We have problems with the electricity and water networks. And despite the hard conditions we’re living through, the Water Authority changed the water lines in a way that doesn’t support our steadfastness in the village and delays water from reaching us.” Today, as settlers tighten their siege on Umm Safa and its children are barred from flying kites, the village’s residents ask only for the most basic necessities that would let them stay. “What we’re doing on our own isn’t enough,” Sabbah said. “We are asking for swift, urgent intervention, and for the Palestinian Authority to deliver on the promises it made us. Otherwise, we will face a major displacement project, and that danger is growing day by day.”