At the edge of the Israeli settlement of Carmel, which cleaves the Palestinian village of Umm al-Kheir in two, a football pitch now stands in memory of Awdah Hathaleen. It is a rough rectangle of compacted earth, bordered by wire fencing and crooked metal posts hammered into the ground. Awdah Hathaleen was killed on July 28, 2025, in this village, Umm al-Kheir, in the southern reaches of the occupied West Bank. The Israeli settler Yinon Levi shot him at close range; the bullet tore through his lungs. Awdah died with a camera in his hand, filming what had become an almost routine event in his village: another settler incursion. Awdah was a teacher, an activist, and the father of three children.

Like many families in the area, his relatives had been expelled from the Naqab desert during the Nakba of 1948 and had eventually settled in the rugged hills south of Hebron. Over the years, Awdah became one of the most visible figures of nonviolent resistance in the region. He documented settler violence, accompanied international delegations through the villages of the South Hebron Hills, and worked alongside Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists to shield his community from demolitions, land confiscations, and the daily strains of colonial rule.

Umm al-Kheir lies in the area known as Masafer Yatta, within Area C of the occupied West Bank. Covering roughly 60 percent of the West Bank, Area C is that part of its territory that, under the Oslo Accords of 1993–94, was meant to pass gradually into Palestinian administration as part of a future state. Instead it remains under full Israeli military and administrative control. Masafer Yatta is a landscape of wind-scoured hills dotted with around twenty small Palestinian shepherding communities. Families here live mostly from herding and subsistence agriculture, often in villages lacking even the most basic infrastructure.