Israeli settlers pressured, the cabinet approved. Now annexation is creeping into West Bank Area B.
Construction in Al-Malha, December 2024
Hagar Shezaf reports in Haaretz on 40 December 2024:
Inside a spotless office on the edge of the desert, in a godforsaken area, even compared with the rest of the West Bank, an image of a well-groomed residential neighborhood hangs on the wall. If not for the inscription in Arabic, one could think this is a prestigious construction project in a community in central Israel.
The office in which the picture is hanging belongs to Murad Jadal, head of the village council of Al-Malha – a new community that Palestinians established east of Bethlehem in recent years. Though the area is a battleground between settlers and Palestinians, until recently, Israel refrained from intervening.
However, the rise of a far-right Israeli government, the violation of diplomatic agreements by both Palestinians and Israelis, and the increase in settler outposts in the area under the cover of war have brought about a radical change in circumstances. In recent months, due to Israeli government orders, the construction spree in the new Palestinian community has come to a halt, and what remains is mainly the skeletons of unfinished buildings. As of now, it seems the neighborhood in the picture will remain merely an image.
The disputed area is called “the accords reserve” by Israel. It’s located in Area B of the West Bank and was handed over to the Palestinian Authority under the Wye River Memorandum, signed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat in 1998. According to this agreement, this area – like the rest of Area B – was intended to be an Israeli settlement-free zone, and planning authority was given to the PA. In turn, the PA promised not to build in it. But in practice, a new Palestinian community was gradually being built in the area.
A couple of weeks ago, Israel demolished Palestinian structures in the area – for the first time since the signing of the Wye agreement. These structures – uninhabited residential buildings – were built in breach of the PA’s commitment not to allow construction in the area. But the decision by the Israeli government, spearheaded by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, to demolish these buildings is also a clear violation of that same agreement – and a further disintegration of what is left of the Oslo Accords.
In addition to these violations, the nongovernmental organization Peace Now is reporting the establishment of five illegal Israeli settlement outposts in the area, all inside Area B, where settlers rarely made inroads in the past. The most violent of these is called Mikne Avraham. Since it was established, local Palestinians have been reporting repeated violent incidents, as well as attempts to expel them. Put together, all this indicates an expansion of settlers’ activity from Area C into Area B.
“The establishment of outposts in Area B and the systematic demolition of Palestinian structures are another step in the annexation revolution that is taking place in the territories,” says Yonatan Mizrahi of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project. “Netanyahu and Smotrich are allowing unprecedented illegal construction by settlers, alongside unprecedented demolition of Palestinian structures. The obsessive preoccupation with Area B is part of a strategic decision by the Israeli government to destroy agreements with the Palestinians in order to create another front for conflict.”
A gem in Area B
Al-Malha has been under construction for the last five years. Both those building the properties and the property buyers are comprised of longtime locals, West Bank residents seeking housing in a cheaper, more spacious area than the crowded Palestinian villages, as well as East Jerusalem residents looking to invest in property.
The rapid appearance of houses and building skeletons is the product of social and economic processes on both sides of the Green Line, or the armistice demarcation line between Israel and the West Bank from before the 1967 Six-Day War. “We wanted to build a model village here, to build parks, proper roads, not like other communities here in the area,” Jadal tells Haaretz.
He points with his hands to a tourist compound with a pool, which is under construction – and where building was halted following the cabinet decision in June, which effectively stripped the Palestinian Authority of its planning and enforcement powers in the area. Following the decision, a military decree was issued banning any construction work in the area – and the development spree was brought to an abrupt halt.
The remnants of a structure built by Palestinians and burned down by settlers at the edge of the accords reserve, December 2024
Though the construction is in violation of the agreement between the PA and Israel, Palestinians say that as long as enforcement power was not in Israel’s hands, nobody in the Civil Administration made them think there was any cause for concern. “Before the [cabinet] decision, the Civil Administration told us we should deal with the PA regarding construction here, rather than with Israel,” says Jadal, expressing the frustration felt by many over the far-reaching harm due to the Israeli decision.
In response to a query by Haaretz, the Civil Administration said that “over the years, and especially in recent years, when construction in the area intensified, messages were sent to PA figures demanding a halt in accordance with the provisions of the agreement – these requests went unanswered.”
While settlers view the construction of the new community as part of a systematic plan by the Palestinian Authority to create territorial continuity in the West Bank, and point to the rapid development as an indication of this, Jadal claims this was mainly a matter of opportunity: He and local Palestinians decided to market and sell the lands in the area as a gem inside Area B, with the understanding that in this territory, Israel can’t interfere. This went on despite the PA’s commitment under the Wye memorandum not to build there.
Jadal claims that the PA didn’t immediately support the building initiative, and that some houses were constructed well before the PA was on board. He says that he and other landowners had to file evidence with the PA proving that this was indeed privately owned rather than public land.
In the end, he says, they managed to convince the PA, which led to the establishment of the local council he heads, which issued building permits to interested parties. Currently, he says, there are some 200 structures in the area – and less than half of them are inhabited. Israel’s decision to halt construction threw investors and buyers for a spin.
Jadal estimates that the council (which he says was only recognized by the PA last year) and the people who bought the land lost some $30 million due to a decrease in its value.
Mohammed, 30, a resident of one of the nearby villages, is one person who bought land in Al-Malha. He says he decided to buy the land because it cost much less than what it would cost in the community where he currently lives. “I spent 900,000 shekels [around $247,000] on land in 2023, then I began to dig a foundation, but ever since Smotrich’s decision I’ve stopped,” he says. “I was supposed to move here already. Instead, we live – we’re three families – in a house of 200 square meters [2,150 square feet].”
Mahmoud Tarayra, a resident of East Jerusalem, also recounts how his investment went sour. “Land in East Jerusalem is very expensive,” Tarayra explains. He bought 28 dunams (nearly 7 acres) in Al-Malha– with the intention to resell 24 of them. “The land has no value now,” he says. “Nobody is going to buy there. I estimate my losses at 400,000 shekels.” Tarayra says he originally bought one dunam of land for 22,000 Jordanian dinars, a currency sometimes used in land purchases in the West Bank (110,000 shekels), but now estimates the land to be worth just 6,000 or 7,000 dinars.
He says that some 300 other East Jerusalem residents bought land in the area. “If this is state land or a nature reserve, why did they not stop it on day one? They allowed people to lose money,” he complains. “People sold gold or cars to buy land there.” Meanwhile, he hopes that the Israeli courts will help residents resolve the issue.
An agreement grounded to the bone
The Israeli decision to demolish illegal structures in Area B didn’t happen overnight. It came after five years of intensive campaigning by settlers, including tours to al-Malha for lawmakers and ministers, including former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman.
In addition, since the current government came to power at the end of 2022, there have been at least four debates on the subject in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
But the fact that the area was handed to the Palestinian Authority as part of the Wye agreement required a creative solution. In order to avoid breaching the diplomatic accord – at least on paper – right-wing lawmakers initially sought to claim that Palestinians in the area were harming nature or security, which could allow Israel to interfere and demolish there.
However, in a discussion in May in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Eli Levertov, the Military Advocate General’s legal adviser for Judea and Samaria, said there was no professional opinion that indicated harm to nature. He added that Yehuda Fuchs, the head of the army’s Central Command at the time, didn’t believe that the construction actually posed a security risk.
The decision the cabinet ultimately made to take back demolition responsibilities and stop the construction was justified by the Palestinian violations of the Wye agreement.
Shaul Arieli, head of the Tamrur-Politography research group, who was involved in formulating the Wye River Memorandum, says that defining the area as a reserve in the original agreement didn’t come out of a desire to protect nature, but due to Netanyahu’s plan to construct a highway there – Route 80, a continuation of the Allon Route through the West Bank.
“We said at the time that this will be a nature reserve – so they [the Palestinians] won’t build there, and there will be no problem,” explains Arieli.
He says that the claim that the PA is in violation of the agreement applies tenfold to Israel, which constantly and unilaterally violates its commitments. Arieli refers to increased construction in Jerusalem, building settlements, legalizing illegal outposts, and more. “So you say they’re in violation of the agreement? We ground it to the bone,” he adds.
In the accords reserve, December 2024
The campaign to expropriate enforcement powers in the area from the Palestinian Authority was spearheaded by the pro-settler organization Regavim, which was co-founded by Smotrich.
In conversation with Haaretz, Avraham Binyamin, Regavim’s policy director, says that the accords reserve area “is strategically very significant” due to its location between settlements bordering the Judean Desert and the settlements of the Jordan Valley. “We are noticing a construction spree there that is very, very unusual and not sporadic,” Binyamin says. “This means that behind it lies a plan by a hostile political entity, namely the Palestinian Authority.”
According to Regavim, on the eve of the Wye memorandum, there were some 270 structures in the area, while today, 3,300 structures stand there. “What is of interest to us are the territorial continuity that the PA is trying to create,” adds Binyamin. This organization, with access to Israel’s corridors of power, first turned its attention to the area in 2013. Initially, they focused mainly on environmental violations, but starting in 2018, it began to focus on construction at Al-Malha.
However, these are not the only reasons that settlers want to prevent Palestinian construction in the area. Gush Etzion Regional Council head Yaron Rosenthal says that the need to stop construction is due to the desire to have Gush Etzion remain “open to the desert.”
Rosenthal also believes that building a new Palestinian community in the area will pose security risks. The Israel Defense Forces “is destroying houses in Gaza all through the perimeter in order to defend Nir Oz [a kibbutz on the Gaza border] residents, right?” He says. “So logic dictates that if in Gaza, an Arab town next to [Israeli] communities poses is a security risk, it’s also a security risk here.” Although for him, this is just the beginning, Binyamin is already happy about the developments. “The very fact that there will be a construction freeze and the establishment of the city will be torpedoed, in practice, this already changes plans,” he says.
“Someone who comes to live in a city and finds himself on two and a half unpopulated blocks may think twice whether they want to live there.”
Binyamin believes that Israel could have stopped the Palestinian construction earlier, and in a simpler way than through a cabinet decision. However, he says, this course of action also has its advantages. “In my view of the Oslo Accords, obviously I’m happy about the Israeli government coming out with a national statement against them,” he says.
‘We’ll either leave or burn’
Meanwhile, the fight over the accords reserve and Area B is not limited to halting Palestinian construction. In recent months, Peace Now has documented the growing trend of Israeli outposts being established in Area B – and particularly in the reserve area.
A tour of the area by Haaretz confirmed the organization’s assessment that five illegal outposts are currently standing in the area. In some cases, settlers live in buildings abandoned by Palestinian herders in the early days of the war, due to settler attacks that intensified after October 7. In other cases, the settlers have erected new, makeshift structures.
One of them is Mikne Avraham. It’s a tiny outpost where a few young people, some of them actually teenagers, are living. They terrorize the few remaining Palestinian residents of the neighboring herding communities.
Until the outbreak of the war, the greatest concern for these families was the Al Minya garbage dump – which was established by Israel and serves both Palestinians and settlers – that polluted their environment.
But life there deteriorated sharply over the last year. Ahmed Trawa is the patriarch of one of the last remaining families in the area. Some seven families fled from there in recent months. “The settlers beat up my son twice,” he recounts, “then they started to come to our home, and one time two of them pretended to be from the military and searched the place.” He says that in May, he himself was attacked by settlers while he was herding sheep. “They come to our house, they throw stones, they curse at us and they dance,” his wife Anwar adds.
They have already filed two complaints with the Israeli police. According to the police, one of the cases was closed when no suspects were located – though Trawa says he can identify them – while the other is still being investigated.
The violence came to a head a month ago, when a group of settlers set fire to the family’s granary outside their home. According to Trawa, he lost some 15,000 shekels because of the arson. “Today I don’t go anywhere, because as soon as they see me going out with the car and my wife staying home alone, they come,” he says. “The children used to walk to the school bus, but they don’t do that anymore – I take them there and back.”
Beyond living under the shadow of fear, this also means a serious financial blow to Trawa’s family, whose life has been paralyzed. “If this goes on, we will leave,” says Anwar in despair. “Either we’ll leave or they’ll burn us.”
In the meantime, the family added walls and a roof to the part of their house that previously served as their porch, in an attempt to prevent stones from reaching them and settlers from entering it.
One supporter of Mikne Avraham is Elisha Yered, a well-known figure on the Judean Hills and former spokesperson for Religious Zionism lawmaker Limor Son Har-Melech. In videos posted on Twitter, he campaigns to raise money for the teenagers manning Mikne Avraham, and points out that the outpost was built on the outskirts of the accords reserve in order to prevent Palestinian construction in the area.
This outpost, unlike many others, is occasionally evicted by the Civil Administration. The last time was about a few days ago. However, as soon as Civil Administration forces finished confiscating the outpost’s equipment and demolishing the outpost, the settlers returned. Soon after, local Palestinians reported that they came to their home to harass them.
The fundraising page for the illegal outpost provides a good illustration of the Israeli government’s and the wild outpost’s pincer movement against Palestinians in the area. “The pioneering settlers on the hill have succeeded in returning more and more homeland territories to Jewish hands on the outskirts of the accords reserve in the Judean Desert, halting the spread of Arab construction with their own bodies,” it says. So far, they have raised 26,000 shekels.
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories responded: “In accordance with the Wye agreement, the area of the ‘accords reserve’ was redesignated from Area C to Area B, from being run by the State of Israel to being run by the Palestinian Authority. However, under the same agreement, the Palestinian Authority promised to refrain from any construction in the area.”
“Through the years, and more so in recent years, when construction in the area intensified, messages were sent to PA figures demanding a halt in accordance with the provisions of the agreement – these requests went unanswered.” “In light of this, and in accordance with the instruction of the security cabinet, the head of Israel’s Central Command signed a special order intended to allow enforcement of construction in the area by the Civil Administration. This order did not redesignate the area, and it is still, in every aspect, Area B.”
“According to interim agreements, the authority to enforce the law over Israelis in the area, handed to the Palestinian Authority, remained with the military commander, including the Civil Administration. By virtue of this authority, enforcement action against illegal construction in various Area B locations have been carried out, including in the accords reserve. When occasion demands it, orders are issued to allow enforcement actions to be taken quickly, whether by zoning orders or by military closure orders that prohibit entry to the area. This was also done in the area known as Mikne Avraham.”
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