UMM AL-KHAIR, West Bank — In this village of 500 people in the West Bank, a bulldozer worked steadily at a pile of boulders near cement-block houses.

The sounds of shoveling and heavy machinery could be heard under the cries of mourning from where dozens of villagers and visitors gathered on July 31 to grieve for Awdah Al Hathaleen, a beloved 31-year-old Palestinian activist, father of three and documentary filmmaker who was shot here four days earlier.

Hathaleen died in the kind of violence he spent his life trying to end. His story is that of many Palestinians living in the West Bank under Israeli occupation, with their lives and livelihoods under increasing threat from a strongly supported settler movement that is urged on by Israel's current right-wing government.

Tamir Kalifa / Get

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