Settler Council is confiscating Palestinians’ flocks; their owners are petitioning for restitution

A Palestinian shepherd with a flock of sheep near Masua in the West Bank

Hagar Shezaf reports in Haaretz on 10 March 2024:

The Jordan Valley Regional Council in the West Bank has acted illegally when it confiscated herds of sheep and cattle from Palestinian residents, Israel’s military prosecution has said.

The council based its actions on a municipal bylaw, but according to the legal adviser for Judea and Samaria in the Military Advocate General’s Corps, Col. Eli Levertov these apply only to Israelis living in the West Bank and not to Palestinians. The council told Haaretz that it acts according to the municipal bylaws.

Since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip began, on October 7, the Jordan Valley Regional Council has acted to capture Palestinians’ livestock on the grounds that they are roaming free or obstructing traffic, on the basis of one bylaw permitting the seizure of stray animals and another that regulates herding. The animals’ owners had to pay the council tens of thousands of shekels to reclaim their livestock.

In a letter to lawyers representing the Palestinians, Levertov specified that the relevant bylaws “cannot be enforced against herders who are not Israeli” settlers.

The jurisdiction area of the Jordan Valley Regional Council is much larger than that of other settlement councils in the West Bank, at around 210,000 acres, and unlike those it extends beyond the restricted areas of the settlements themselves.

On Thursday, the organization Yesh Din and lawyers Michael Sfard, Shlomo Lecker and Snir Klein, who represent four Palestinians whose herds were seized, petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice. They are demanding that the council release the cattle of some of the petitioners that are still in its custody and refund all the money it collected from the herders. The petition also notes that these are communities that have been grazing their livestock in the area for decades and that their livelihood depends on being able to put their herds out to pasture.

“In recent weeks, the council purports to be a governing body toward those who are not its residents [and] neither vote for nor are elected to its institutions,” the lawyers wrote in the petition. They argued additionally that the enforcement of the bylaws on Palestinians is a “significant infringement on the exclusive governing power” of the army in the West Bank. Lecker requested from the council’s lawyer invoices detailing the amounts demanded from his clients but says he has not received them. The petition was initiated by a group called the “Jordan Valley activists.”

The petition documents three instances in which herds were impounded. The first occurred on December 25, when an inspector from the council seized 19 cows, on the grounds that they were found wandering unaccompanied near the settlement of Hemdat. Eight days later, the owners received a bill of 49,000 shekels (almost $14,000) for the animals’ release, which they paid. The petition claims the cattle arrived to the Hemdat area in the first place after it had been captured elsewhere by settlers who released it there.

In the second incident, on January 7, the council impounded 200 cows, claiming they were grazing in a prohibited area. The owner could not pay the 143,000 shekels demanded from them, and the animals are still in the council’s possession. The petition claims that on January 6, a settler told the owner that his herds may graze in that area. A third seizure occurred on January 22, when around 600 sheep were crossing a road. The flock’s two owners paid the 75,000 shekels necessary for their release.

In a statement, Yesh Din said: “The danger posed by the pretension of the regional council, which seeks to hold the power to regulate the grazing of Palestinian herders, has enormous ramifications. This is a new and predatory form of economic violence by settlers and an authority that has distinct annexationist aspects, as it expresses the degradation of the military commander’s responsibility in the occupied territory and the assignment of its authorities to civilian governmental bodies.”

Avraham Moshe Segal, lawyer for the Jordan Valley Regional Council said in a statement: “The council sees to the welfare and security of its residents and acts, among other things, to eradicate the phenomenon of stray animals, which endangers residents and causes severe safety hazards, including traffic accidents with multiple casualties. This is a frivolous petition, and the council is confident that the Supreme Court will not lend a hand to the endangerment of residents of the Jordan Valley due to illegally grazing and roaming animals.”

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