West bank villages are living in fear of annexation as israeli settlers move in

West bank villages are living in fear of annexation as israeli settlers move in

Israeli settler outposts have appeared around the village of Bardala at the northern end of the occupied West Bank since last year; the semi-nomadic Bedouin shepherds say some had to abandon their camps in the area following intimidation from the settlers and tighter military control in the area.

Just metres from the last houses in Bardala, a Palestinian village at the northern end of the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Army has been bulldozing a dirt road and ditch between the community and open grazing land on the hills behind it.

Israel’s military said the works were for security and to allow it to patrol the area following the killing of an Israeli civilian in August near the village by a man from another town. It did not detail what it was building there.

Farmers from the fertile Jordan Valley village fear the Army patrols and Israeli settlers moving in will exclude them from pastures that feed around 10,000 sheep and goats, as has happened in other parts of the West Bank, undercutting their livelihoods and eventually driving them from the village.

Israeli settler outposts have appeared around the village since last year, with clusters of Israeli flags newly fluttering from nearby hilltops. The settlers intimidated semi-nomadic Bedouin shepherds to abandon their camps in the area last year, four Bedouin families and Israeli human rights NGOs have said.

The tighter military control in the Jordan Valley and arrival of settler outposts in the area over the past months are new developments in a part of the West Bank that had mostly avoided the build up of Israel’s presence on the ground in central areas of the Palestinian territory.

Fractured territory

With each advance of Israeli settlements and roads, the territory becomes more fractured, further undermining prospects for a contiguous land on which Palestinians could build a sovereign state.

Most countries consider Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank to be illegal.

Over recent weeks, caravans and shelters have begun appearing on the scrub-covered hills a few hundred metres west of Bardala, on land behind the new track, presspersons saw. Such temporary shelters have been the first signs of new outposts being built.

Ibrahim Sawafta, a member of the Bardala village council, said two dozen farmers would be prevented from reaching grazing land if soldiers and settler outposts obstruct their free movement. Unable to keep their large flocks in pens within the village itself, they would be forced to sell.

“Bardala would be a small prison,” he said, sitting on a bench outside his house in the village.

He said the overall goal was “to restrict people, to force them to leave the Jordan Valley.”

The Army has said the area behind the dirt road outside Bardala was designated as a live fire zone but included “a passage” manned by Israeli soldiers, suggesting limitations on free movement in the area.

It said the passage would allow for “the continuation of daily life and the fulfilment of residents’ needs,” without giving further details.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as the Yesha Council and the Jordan Valley Council, that represent settlers in the West Bank did not reply to requests for comment.

Mr. Sawafta said gunmen had been known to come into the area from towns to the west and the barrier appeared intended to make access more difficult and force traffic through main roads with security checkpoints under Israeli control.

But he said the effect of the move would be to obstruct access to the land, which in some cases was owned by villagers. The activity around Bardala is part of a wider Israeli effort to reshape the West Bank. Over the year and a half since war broke out in Gaza, settlement activity has accelerated in areas seen as the core of a future Palestinian state. Meanwhile, Israel’s pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the return to the U.S. White House of Donald Trump who has already proposed that Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across West Asia and beyond as an attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinian territories.

In recent weeks, Army raids in refugee camps near volatile West Bank cities, including Jenin, Tulkarm, and Tubas, near Bardala, have sent tens of thousands of people fleeing their homes, fuelling fears of permanent displacement. The raids come amid a renewed push to formally absorb the West Bank as part of Israel, a proposal supported by some of Mr. Trump’s aides.

The West Bank, so named because of its relation to the river that separates it from Jordan, has long been seen by religious nationalist hardliners in Israel as part of a Greater Israel through historical and Biblical connections to the Jewish people. Jewish settlement building has roared ahead under Mr. Netanyahu and allies in government such as hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, who said last year he would push to gain Washington’s support for annexation in 2025.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said at the time that the government’s position on annexation had not yet been settled. Israel’s opposition to ceding control of the West Bank has been deepened by its fears of a repeat of the October 7, 2023 attack near Gaza. Since the start of the war in Gaza, 43 new outposts, the seeds of future settlements, have been built in the West Bank, according to Peace Now, an Israeli organization that tracks settlement building.

For months, Bedouins living in semi-permanent stockades in the hills grazing sheep and goats around the Jordan Valley have been subjected to harassment by violent groups of settlers.

For Mr. Sawafta, from the Bardala village council, developments like the one in his home village point to an effort to dispossess Palestinians in the way their parents and grandparents were dispossessed before.

“Israel effectively and practically confiscates the land,” he said.