In five years, four new settler farms took Palestinian land the size of a big town

An Israeli settler shepherds cattle near the settlement of Rimonim

Amira Hass reports in Haaretz on 14 November 2021:

Over the past five years, four settler farms in the West Bank have taken over Palestinian territory the size of the city of Holon (some 19,000 dunams, or 4,700 acres), or the cities of Bnei Brak (7,300 dunams) and Lod (around 12,000 dunams) combined. Employing systematic violence and terror, the residents of the four outposts, aided by the army, have blocked Palestinian access to land totaling 20,866 dunams, which the Palestinians had used to cultivate crops and graze livestock.

The record is held by Uri’s Farm on the Umm Zuqa preserve in the northern Jordan Valley, which was established in 2016 and prevents Palestinian communities from accessing over 14,000 dunams of land. Next is the outpost of Zvi Bar Yosef from the settlement of Halamish, erected three years ago. It prevents the farmers of Jibiya, Kobar and Umm Safa from accessing 2,500 dunams of their lands. A shepherd’s farm southwest of Samu, established this year, has so far taken over 1,850 dunams belonging to the village of Zanuta. In 2020, Mann Farm was built east of the town of Yatta, taking over 1,537 dunams from nearby villages.

The data refers only to these four individual farms out of some 50 similar outposts created over the past decade, and 150 outposts dating back to the 1990s. The residents of many of these outposts use violence to take over Palestinian lands – which means that the total area they have appropriated is much larger than the above figure.

As test cases for the phenomenon, which has only been growing since the 1990s, the human rights group B’Tselem chose five areas in the West Bank where nine farms (including the aforementioned four) operate: the northern Jordan Valley east of Tamun and Tubas, the villages northwest of Ramallah, the villages southwest of Nablus, the villages east of Yatta and the villages south of Samua.

Its researchers documented, calculated and quantified the extent of the lands appropriated by the outposts and one settlement, Halamish, in those five areas: 28,416 dunams, or the size of Kiryat Bialik, Netivot and Ofakim combined. The organization Kerem Navot, which investigates the Israeli policy of taking over land of the West Bank, assisted in mapping and calculating the data in the final report.

The fact that this is a pattern and that Israeli authorities do not put an end to the systematic violence has led B’Tselem to the conclusion that the phenomenon serves the interests of the state.

“Ostensibly these are two unconnected tracks,” the report reads. “The state takes over land in open and official ways, sanctified by legal counsel and judges” – over 2 million dunams in the West Bank since 1967 – “whereas settlers, who likewise seek to take over land to further their agenda, employ violence against Palestinians for their own reasons and of their own volition. But it is the same track: Settler violence against Palestinians serves the state as a major unofficial means of taking over more and more land in the West Bank, and that violence is carried out with the state’s full support, with the aid and participation of its representatives.”

B’Tselem and Kerem Navot have yet to calculate the scope of settlers’ violent appropriation of all Palestinians land by individual farms and settler outlets in the West Bank. But a general estimate has already been made by Ze’ev Hever, the head of Amana, which is the operational and financial front of the religious, pro-settlement Gush Emunim movement and which is behind the establishment of the outposts. At an online conference held in February, Hever explained that the shepherd farms are an efficient tool for taking over Palestinian land, more so than building new settlements or neighborhoods. The combined built-up area of all the conventional settlements is some 100 square kilometers, he said, whereas the farms alone have taken over double that – close to 200,000 dunams.

“Those who have the right motivation to act and move others to act can reach the right results,” Hever told the online attendees. B’Tselem doesn’t know how accurate Hever’s overall estimate is, but in just two other areas in the West Bank which were not included in the current report, violent extensions of existing settlements have taken over at least 36,500 dunams – 26,500 in the area of the settlements Eli and Shiloh east of Ramallah, and 10,000 in the area of Tkoa-Nokdim southwest of Bethlehem.

The report includes 20 testimonies describing the violent clashes initiated by settlers from the outposts and individual farms with the intent of intimidating Palestinians and preventing them from working the land and grazing cattle on their territory, and is based on dozens of others. Many of the violent incidents are well-documented. The authors of the report didn’t have the time to include two violent attacks that took place last week in the hamlet of Masafer Yatta: One on November 8, when an Israeli from Mann Farm struck a resident of the village of Saadat Tha’aleh with a club, breaking his hand, and the other on November 10, when Israelis from a new outpost that’s been repeatedly erected and torn down attacked the residents of Khalat al-Diba: They assaulted a farmer with clubs and broke the windows of three cars, and then returned later that night, shooting live fire and wounding two Palestinians.

It’s not just being pushed off their land. The report documents how many Palestinian farmers and entire communities are being impoverished. Under pressure of the violence and fear, the farmers scale down or abandon the traditional economic pursuits that formerly provided them with a respectable living, such as raising sheep and seasonal crops. They spend a fortune on purchasing feed and water for their flocks, kept in the pens because their access to the grazing spaces and watering holes has been blocked.

Haaretz asked the Israel Defense Forces, the police and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories for a response to the report’s conclusion that violence from the outposts and isolated farms serves the state. The IDF Spokesperson’s Office replied: “The IDF invests a lot of effort in attempts to eradicate the violent incidents in the area, and is in direct contact with the various civilian and security entities in these areas. The IDF will continue to operate in the region, in order to enable law and security in the area.” The police and COGAT declined to comment.

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Full B’tselem report ‘State Business’