Photos: West Bank Bedouins

The Jahalin Bedouins are a Palestinian tribe who live in the Judean desert of the West Bank. They are originally from inside Israel, but fled into the West Bank as refugees in the years after Israel’s establishment.

On a strip of highway illuminating the red earth, Israeli cars speed through the dark and lonely expanse toward Jerusalem.

“All Bedouin communities from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and Jersualem are under a demolition order,” Abu Khamees explains.

Rolled up in blankets and exposed to the chilly morning air, a member of the Abu Dahouk family of nine begins to stir.

In the cold morning air, Nasrin washes her hair using a bucket before heading out to school.

Nasrin looks on as her mother, Sara Dahouk, prepares a meal for the family in the tent-like structure where they live.

Sara Dahouk prepares a meal for her family.

Iman Dahouk gets ready for school.

Pink backpacks outside the entrance of one of the shacks await the young girls.

As the sun rises over the desert valley, uniformed schoolchildren walk to class.

Bedouin schoolchildren run with a Palestinian flag after attending school near their home.

Israel has issued an order for the closure of the Bedouin Al Khan al Ahmar School in the West Bank.

A teacher works with her students at the elementary school. Many of the 160 pupils make daily treks of up to two miles to get to the school.

Children play at recess.

A donkey stands amid a cluster of shacks.

Iman Dahouk finds amusement atop the family donkey. She lives with her family in a Bedouin compound in the West Bank.

The families at Khan al Ahmar live with their flocks in the hills.

Sara Dahouk feeds the livestock.

Kamal Ahmadin, 21, a Bedouin shepherd, helps deliver a baby goat. He lives in a community with nearly 80 people.

12-year old Nasrin and 14-year old Iman seek shelter from the pouring rain.

Bedouins wait for aid to arrive.

Bedouins rely on food assistance, which is provided to them once a month.

The Jahalin Bedouin live in an impoverished region of the West Bank in the desert. The few jobs available to them are often at Jewish settlements doing menial work.

Amid a cluster of crudely made shacks nestled in a hillside set back from the road, a chorus of roosters mark a tiny Bedouin encampment known as Khan al Ahmar.

The morning sun colors the Judean desert a burnt orange.