In Yanun, the men cried as they got into two cars to leave for the larger nearby village of Aqraba, where they believe there will be safety in numbers. They'll live with relatives there or move into rented apartments.

"Death would be easier than leaving," Kamal Sobih said, describing his attachment to the land where generations of his family have lived. "But there is no choice." He said he often spent nights keeping watch for attackers from his windows.

Ahmed Sobih, an elderly man, sat in the back seat of the one of the cars, an Arab head scarf covering his right eye. He said he lost sight in the eye after a beating from an Israeli settler.

He had been tending sheep on the hillside when a stranger approached. Sobih, mistaking the man for someone from a neighboring Arab village, went to shake hands with the man and offer him a cigarette but was beaten with his own walking stick, he said.

The village chief, Abdelatif Sobih, was the last to go. He said he's been attacked seven times and that his wife Raideh threatened to leave him if they didn't abandon the place.

"I kept urging the people not to leave, but they did, one by one," he said, crying. "They left me without a choice. I'm blaming my people as well (as the settlers) because they left me alone."