People are very worried. It’s a different kind of strategy here. In Gaza it’s very clear. It’s a huge genocide. Here it’s a slow silent genocide. The people are suffering without access to their land, without work, with a lack of water. People are also suffering to protect their own land. It’s a different kind of war, you know, but the same idea- confiscating and taking the land, for only one reason-displacing all of our people, to outside of Palestine.
– Jordan Valley Farmer talking with the Canary
Gaza genocide: a cover for war crimes in the West Bank
Under the cover of its genocide in Gaza, the Israeli occupation has seized the opportunity to escalate its long-running campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, by tightening its control through colonisation and expulsion. Settlement expansion is happening at an unprecedented level, while land theft, targeted violence, harassment, and forced displacement are now occurring openly, on a daily basis. The lives of Palestinians living in the West Bank have become more difficult and dangerous than ever before, and farmers are on the frontline.
Yasmeen El-Hasan, International Advocacy Coordinator for the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a Ramallah based non-profit working to empower farmers and protect their rights and resources in Palestine, said:
This isn’t a new crisis, just an escalation of a long standing Israeli project of settler colonialism in Palestine, but now there’s an increasingly emboldened Israeli government, and the US rising far-right rhetoric and fascism is emboldening it further. The Israeli occupation is expanding its colonial infrastructure at record speeds, doing whatever it takes to steal that land- including exploiting it, destroying it and genociding its people. They stole more land in 2024 than in the previous 20 years combined. Now, in 2025, they’re on track to surpass that level of land theft.
In 2023, a new government body was established, called the Settlements Administration, which manages all aspects of life in the settlements. It has the authority to manage all land related matters, including land seizure and declaring ‘state land’, enforcing planning and building laws against Palestinian construction in Area C of the West Bank-which is under full Israeli military and civil control, and legalising outposts.
Settlements Administration: ‘normalising’ land theft from Palestinian farmers
El-Hasan explained that:
Since December 2024, the Settlements Administration holds weekly meetings to approve settlement building and expansion plans – i.e. land theft, so, in just a few months, it’s approved about 15,000 settlement units in the West Bank. This is normalising the ongoing settlement expansion, which is a mechanism of domination and forcible displacement, and is primarily targeting Area C, which makes up 61% of the West Bank and where the rural communities are. It’s also no coincidence that Area C is the most fertile and resource rich land.
Since October 7 2023, violence towards Palestinians has intensified, especially in rural areas, with more than 915 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank, and more than 8398 injured. According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Committee, there were 255 incidents of Israeli settler violence in March 2025 alone – including physical assaults, arson, and property destruction.
Although settlements are illegal under international law, Jews from around the world are welcomed by Israel to colonise Palestine. These settlers have the state’s full ideological and material support, are armed by the government, and operate in complete coordination with Israeli police and soldiers, storming villages, burning homes, killing livestock, destroying crops and trees, and acting with total impunity. Settlers are now often part of the Israeli occupation forces reserves, so it can be difficult to differentiate between them when they wear military uniform.
Illegal settlers get their power through US and European government support
Ghassan Najjar is a prominent activist, and founder of the agroecological Land and Farming Cooperative, in Burin, which is made up of 22 men and women: all graduates.
Najjar explained that employment is extremely difficult to find, so they have created their own jobs. The village of Burin is 12km South of Nablus, and surrounded by three Israeli settlements. The settlers, who mainly originate from America, have destroyed the cooperative’s agricultural equipment many times, burning greenhouses, cutting water lines, and stealing crops, while directing violence towards the community on a daily basis.
Najjar said:
We were under attack from the settlers before, but after October 7 it is guaranteed that the soldiers and the settlers attack together. Before, they were working under the table, but now everything has become clear. They don’t care about the international law. They don’t care about humanity. They don’t care about anything. They can do whatever they want. Everyday we are under attack. And when I say every day, I mean it. Just now the village was under attack by the army, and more than 100 tear gas bombs were shot at the houses. Settlers come onto the land, attack people and cut the trees. They burn things, steal from people, shoot live bullets sometimes. They really are like criminals. Everyday it’s becoming worse. They get support from the American government and the European governments and this gives them the power to attack the Palestinians. They think they are more important than us. Our life doesn’t matter to them.
Settlers around Burin, as in many other parts of the occupied West Bank, also poison Palestinian land by spraying chemicals over the soil, injecting them into olive trees, and sometimes dissolving them in irrigation water, not only killing all the plants but also contaminating the soil and preventing anything else growing in the future.
‘Peace means no occupation’
Najjar said:
Nothing’s normal here in the life, nothing! We live day by day. But even when we are under attack we will not leave our land because for us, as Palestinian people, the land is our dignity and we can’t live without dignity, as we can’t live without land. Many people talk about peace, but peace doesn’t mean rebuilding and being under attack every time. Peace means no occupation.
Settlers not only destroy water pipes, but control five of Burin’s seven springs, making them inaccessible to locals. Although villagers use the remaining two, they do not provide enough water, so residents have to buy back their stolen water from Mekorot, the state-owned Israeli water company. This is common practice in large parts of Area C of the occupied West Bank.
Since 1967, Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank, imposing military orders affecting every aspect of Palestinian lives, including water reserves – which the occupation controls 85% of in the occupied West Bank, to advance its political goals of Jewish supremacy. Military Order 158 bans Palestinians from constructing new water installations – such as pumps, wells, or irrigation systems, without a permit -which are almost impossible to obtain. Palestinians are also denied access to the Jordan River, along its whole course through the West bank, with Israel declaring it a closed military zone, and destroying irrigation ditches and pumps that farmers relied on.
Palestinian farmers are the resistance
Land is becoming more fragmented, and communities more isolated. In early 2023, the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) documented the existence of 565 barriers to movement between villages and towns, and even within the same village or town. This number has now jumped to around 850, and their purpose is to control, dominate, and punish.
Every Palestinian town and village is surrounded by these movement barriers, and Palestinians never know which ones will be open or closed, and cannot travel freely anywhere.
Burin is no exception, and in addition to its two checkpoints, the army has now fixed seven gates across the roads entering and exiting the village. Not only can these obstacles block access to essential services such as emergency healthcare and education, but a journey that should take two hours can now take eight, if it takes place at all. Many rural areas are completely closed off, livelihoods are impacted, and Palestinians are left struggling to access their land.
Farming is a means of self-sufficiency, so the occupation does its best to destroy Palestinian agricultural production. Farmers and herders are not only prevented from reaching their land, but also face many other problems.
Israel has not only flooded the West Bank market with its produce – 80% of which now comes from Israeli sources – but it has also banned the use of chemical fertilisers, since October 2023.
Seizing more Palestinian land under the guise of ‘security’
Saad Dagher is an agronomist and agroecological farmer. His farm is in Bani Zaid, a village in Area A of the West Bank, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority. He said:
On a personal level it is good that there are no colonisers on my land, but I can’t be happy while other farmers are suffering, and also being attacked. I see the banning of chemical fertilisers on the market as an opportunity to stop using chemicals, but although there are many farmers who are now starting to join the agroecological movement, many are having problems without fertilisers, although some are already starting to replace chemicals with organic options. The main goal of the Israelis is to take more land, so I consider staying on the land and farming as a main part of resistance.
Land confiscation has also accelerated and, according to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, the Israeli occupation authorities have seized more than 13,000 acres of Palestinian land in the West Bank, not only declaring it as state land for the benefit of colonial settlements, but also stealing it under other pretexts.
Najjar therefore argues that:
They are making many areas of land in our village into military zones. The Israelis use this as an excuse to stop Palestinians going to their land. They keep saying it’s for security, but the land is not even close to the settlement.
Settlement expansion means no ‘two state solution’
Ayoub Abuhejleh is a farmer in the village of Deir Istiya, in the Northern occupied West Bank. Since 2011, when a dirt road improved access to his land, he has built terraces, and planted about 370 olive trees, figs, and almonds. But in June 2023, a new settler outpost, consisting of a caravan, with sheep and goats, appeared just 100 metres from his land.
Abuhejleh said that;
They started to control most of the area. Then after October 7, they were attacking the farmers and we were forbidden to go onto our own land, to work on it, and to harvest. The settlers dug up the agricultural road, so we couldn’t drive cars or tractors there. They have sheep and goats, that come and eat all the trees because they have cut the fence around my land. The Israeli soldiers stay 24 hours a day at the outpost, protecting and working with the settlers. The law protects them and they can do whatever they want. In my area of 19 Palestinian villages we also have 22 settlements. There has been talk about a two state solution for years, but they are building settlements everywhere so this is not possible.
Not only are olive trees an integral part of Palestinian identity, linked to the steadfastness and history of the people in their land, but they also provide a vital source of income for over 80,000 families in the West Bank, with 15% of the population of the West Bank relying economically on the olive harvest.
But farmers are facing serious threats to their livelihoods and also their safety. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, restricted access to their land cost Palestinian farmers more than 1350 tonnes of olive oil last year, while settler attacks against farmers tripled during last year’s olive picking season. In the one month between October and November there were 260 settler-related incidents directly related to olive harvesting, across 89 West Bank communities. Most were violent, resulting in casualties, property damage, or both.
21,000 Palestinian trees, mainly olive, intentionally destroyed by the occupation in 2024
As part of their efforts to erase Palestinian history and culture, while also destroying livelihoods and ethnically cleansing the territory, settlers have, for decades, uprooted, burned, and destroyed olive trees, many of which are hundreds of years old. A report by the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem states that in 2024 there were more than 150 attacks destroying fruit trees in the occupied West Bank, especially olive trees, resulting in the uprooting of more than 21,000 trees.
In October 2023, the settlers harvested and stole Abuhejleh’s olives. So, at harvest time last November, he tried to access his land, but was told by the Israeli soldiers it was forbidden for anyone to be there. They blindfolded him, tied his hands behind his back, and took him to a military office in a nearby settlement, where he was questioned for six hours before being released.
He said:
It’s really sad, because I started this land from zero, and since 2011 I have been raising these trees like my children. They started giving fruit when the settlers came in 2023, so we could not harvest. Because we haven’t taken care of the land for the last two years, the trees are starting to get weak.
Earlier this month, Abuhejleh and 15 other farmers from Deir Istiya, obtained a court ruling confirming their right to work on their lands, but the harassment has continued.
However, although farmers are currently facing so many challenges, Zaytoun, a non-profit which helps Palestinian farming communities market their produce in the UK, says support and awareness for its mission are surging here.
The organisation also helps farmers improve the quality of their goods, through training and equipment provision, and has worked with the Palestine Fair Trade Association to purchase and distribute over 50,000 saplings, mainly olive, to more than 800 farmers across 50 villages. Buying Zaytoun products is a way those of us in the UK can directly support Palestinian farmers.
The occupation’s intention is to grab land by any means possible
Closed military zones are not the only pretext for dispossessing farmers of their land. Others include extending boundaries of nature reserves, establishing security and buffer zones, and building new settlement infrastructure: designed to facilitate settler mobility while restricting and controlling Palestinian movement.
Israel has used pseudo-legal regulations and bureaucratic procedures since 1948 to continue plundering West Bank lands. All land is considered ‘State Land’ unless proven otherwise, but land registration is almost impossible for Palestinians, although their land may have been in their family for many generations, so around 70% of the land in the West bank remains unregistered.
This works in favour of the occupation, which is preventing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from accessing their land, because if the land is not registered, and is not cultivated for three consecutive years, it reverts to ‘State Land’.
When the occupation erected the separation barrier between the West Bank and Israel, it did not put it on the Green Line, as required by international law, but deep within Palestinian territory. 85% of its length runs as much as 18km inside the West Bank, trapping 9% of Palestinian land within the ‘seam zone’, and isolating it, on one side from the rest of the West Bank, and on the other from the State of Israel.
Palestinians who want to enter the seam zone need to obtain a special permit in advance, to access their land through gates in the barrier. But things have now changed.
North West Bank projects and programme director with UAWC Moayyad Bsharat said:
This year, the Israeli occupation authorities have announced Palestinians will not be able to pass these gates to access their lands.
Violent settlers supported by the Israeli state
Israel is currently carrying out the largest forced displacement in the occupied West Bank since 1967, affecting more than 44,285 Palestinians. It implemented this in January and February alone. At the same time, the level of demolitions of Palestinian homes and violent attacks by settlers has sharply increased. This is all part of Israel’s plan to change the geography of the West Bank, and pave the way for annexation – which it has wanted since 1967.
Over the past decade, outposts have become one of the main methods of taking over West Bank land, and driving Palestinian communities out. Outposts, which are makeshift encampments often consisting of caravans, are illegal not only under international law, but also under Israeli law. But, in practice, this is not the case.
A new report by Peace Now and Kerem Navot reveals that not only are outposts given full support and protection, along with hundreds of millions of shekels of funding from the Israeli government, but a small group of violent settlers have used shepherding outposts to seize, and control, more than 785,000 dunams of land (approximately 195,000 acres). This is equivalent to about 15% of the West Bank’s total area.
The World Zionist Organization underpinning settler violence
These outposts have increased in number by 50% in the last 18 months, and their settlers have displaced more than 60 Palestinian shepherding communities, mostly Bedouins, from their lands, something that was unheard of until July 2022.
The report also found the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), entrusted by the state with managing vast areas of land, has secretly allocated a huge area of West Bank land to dozens of settlers for “grazing purposes”, allowing them to not only take control of extra land, but also get around the ban on state funding for activities officially considered illegal.
Hagit Ofran is co-author of the report, and director of Peace Now’s settlement watch project. She said that:
The Settlement Division of the WZO is the arm of the Israeli government for ‘dirty works’ in the Occupied Territories. They granted the violent settlers with at least 80,000 dunams (about 20,000 acres) in the West Bank-some of it is not even under its management-for ‘grazing’ purposes, while the true purpose is the violent expulsion of the Palestinians from large areas in the West Bank.
The West Bank’s breadbasket: essential for a future Palestinian state
The Jordan Valley makes up almost 30% of the territory and runs along the eastern side of the occupied West Bank, bordering Jordan. It is not only the main food production region, due to its abundant fertile soil and water resources, but is also the West Bank’s only border external to Israel, so is essential to the sovereignty of a future Palestinian state.
But since 1967, the occupation has been attempting to ethnically cleanse and gradually annex this sparcely populated resource rich area and, in 2019, Netanyahu announced he would be the one to do this if he won the election.
At one time Palestinians grew large quantities of fresh produce here, and farmer’s incomes were good. But at least 85% of Area C of the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea are now currently off limits to them, and the situation is becoming more difficult and dangerous by the day, for the 60,000 Palestinians still living and resisting in the region, including the many farmers.
Bsharat said that:
There are more than six military checkpoints, which prevent people from moving freely, and also cause many problems for farmers and herders wanting to market their produce. In the Northern part of the Jordan Valley, in the Tubas area, the Tayseer checkpoint, (which is a key transit point for Palestinians in the area) has been closed since February 4.
Israel ‘don’t want any kind of solution’ that involves a Palestinian state
Mahmoud lives in the Northern Jordan Valley, and farms land passed down to him by his grandfather. He said:
When we need to go to Nablus or Tubas, which is 20-30 kilometres, we spend seven hours sometimes, just to pass the checkpoints. We also have to pay five shekels a box (£1), just to get the vegetables out of the Jordan Valley, and then have to pay five shekels to a man who sells it at the market. That’s at least 30% of what I produce. I would like to establish a market in the Jordan Valley, but how will people come here through all the checkpoints, and when I’m not allowed to build any structures. It’s impossible.
Water theft, land confiscation, and settler violence have been going on for decades in the West Bank, but have now reached record levels. Farmers are not only struggling to keep their land, to grow crops and make a living, but also to survive.
After 7 October, around 150,000 Palestinians lost their permits to work in Israel, although they are still allowed to work in the West Bank settlements, which are built on land stolen from them. Rising unemployment has meant more and more people are now farming but, out of necessity, others are forced to work in these illegal West Bank settlements.
Mahmoud said that:
More than 10,000 Palestinians have been forced to find work inside the Israeli settlements, in the Jordan Valley alone. Most are farmers who have lost their land and aren’t allowed to access it. They don’t have any other choice. It’s part of the Israeli government plan. They kicked the workers out from ‘48 (meaning the 1948 occupied territories = Israel), but they don’t kick out any workers from the settlements. Why? Because they want to make these settlements bigger, because they want settlers to come and live here, not in places like Tel Aviv, because they don’t want any kind of solution, to have a Palestinian state.
Water apartheid: another crime by Israel
The illegal Israeli settlements have unrestricted access to water, and the 700,000 settlers consume three times more water, on average, than West Bank Palestinians, according to B’Tselem. 65% of these Palestinians are not even supplied with daily running water in their homes. In the Jordan Valley, the herding communities consume just 26 litres a day – an amount similar to the average in disaster zones, while the settlers consume 400-700 litres of water per capita per day. This is collective punishment directed at Palestinians.
Mahmoud said:
The settlements are so green. They have flowers and swimming pools. The settlers now grow more than two million date palms, and advocados which are exported to Europe. You can imagine how much water they need in the summer time! But if you go to the Palestinian village, it looks like a desert, just because we aren’t allowed to have water, or to build any new structures.
Since Covid-19, settlers are also increasingly controlling Palestinian access to the natural springs, often with the help of the military, which farmers have relied on for generations to irrigate their crops and provide water for their cattle. For example, in Ein al-Hilweh, in the North of the Jordan Valley, settlers have put a fence around the spring, which has been used by villages and hundreds of Palestinian families in the area, preventing Palestinian access, while settlers have also taken over rainwater cisterns dug by the community to provide water for livestock. The situation in Hilweh is not unique, but is part of a broader trend of water theft in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Mahmoud explained that:
Palestinians are not allowed to have the water. It’s not because we don’t have enough, but because of the system that has been created. The Israelis don’t want us to access the water, because they don’t want us to be here. We are really suffering, but there is no law to protect anything for us. The military confiscates land, not allowing access to anyone. They want to control and steal our land and our resources, not just to make sure we don’t return to it, but also to destroy our culture. But I don’t think any Palestinian will leave their land. It’s not only about our land, but about our dreams, our rights, our history and our future.
No legal system to protect Palestinian farmers
The Jordan Valley Solidarity Network (JVS) is a Palestinian grassroots organisation which not only raises awareness, but also protects and supports threatened communities in the Jordan Valley.
An activist with JVS, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Canary that the settlers work with the Israeli military and police, who give them confiscated land to establish new outposts.
There is no legal system protecting Palestinians, so even the courts favour the settlers, and when Palestinians are beaten and put in hospital, and they get a doctor’s report explaining what has happened, when they go to the Israeli police station to make a case against the settlers, the police do not allow them in.
The anonymous JVS activist said:
There are lots of examples of this. We even have pictures of the settlers who are making the attacks and harassment. It would be easy for governments to find out the facts, if they really want to know. International law and humanitarian law have been broken. You cannot imagine the last three years! There are at least 30 new outposts in the Jordan Valley. Settlers have been attacking families directly in their homes and tents, sometimes killing the animals at night, beating the Palestinian shepherd who’s taking his sheep or goats for food, and starting to make it harder for them to take them outside. They then bring Israeli flags and put them infront of the Palestinian homes. If they are moved, the settlers will come as a group and beat the families, steal the tractors, destroy the water lines. People are scared. They can’t sleep at night.
Palestinian communities always need volunteers, Israeli and international, to act as witnesses and provide protective presence. Participating not only allows foreigners to learn about the way of life in these often isolated communities, but can also really provide some protection to Palestinians constantly under threat of violence, and displacement.
International volunteers: welcomed in the occupied West Bank
Alex Chabbott, 44, is an American citizen, who has been a social justice activist for 25 years. Although he actively supports Palestinian rights, Chabbott had never travelled to Palestine until last year.
He said that:
I didn’t realise I had something to offer. I felt that I would need some special skills, but going there I learnt that’s not true. Literally anyone can go, and every Palestinian family you meet wants people there. It definitely makes a difference 1000%. Just having our presence there, and being with them, makes them feel safer. Tense situations often diffuse with foreigners around.
Earlier this year, Chabbott volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement, and travelled to Masafer Yatta, in the South Hebron Hill, where Oscar-winning film No Other Land was filmed. This area was designated as a closed military area known as Firing Zone 918, in the 1980s.
Throughout the occupied West Bank, 20% of the land has been designated as military fire zones, for only one purpose: to acquire more land for settlement expansion.
The residents of Masafer Yatta fought the plans to forcibly displace them, but in 2022, the High Court ruled Israel could expel more than 1000 Palestinians, and demolish their villages. These semi-nomadic pastoralists, who have lived in the area for generations have, for decades, faced ongoing threats of imminent displacement and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli army.
A protective presence in isolated Palestinian communities
While Chabbott was in Masafer Yatta, he saw seven homes demolished in At-Tuwani alone, the village where he was staying. The homeless Palestinians then set up tents, but the army returned with tractors and destroyed them. There has also been a sharp increase in violent attacks, from the increasing number of outposts in Firing Area 918.
Chabbott said that:
The adult settlers always have their M16s, they’re always armed. Sometimes the kids have pistols hidden in their belts, they are at the forefront of the violence, especially the Hill Top Youth who are around this area. They turn up in groups, beat people, kill sheep, break solar panels and cut water lines. They come at night and set cars on fire. If the Palestinians defend themselves they will get into big trouble, so the settlers can literally do whatever they want. Sometimes the occupation forces help facilitate the violence- an attack can start off with the settlers, then the army shows up and the settlers will go away, but the army will continue to attack the people, shooting them, tear gas, concussion grenades. And there’s no justice from the police, that’s for sure.
Volunteers providing protective presence usually go to the families which are most isolated, and in most need of protection from settler violence. In Masafer Yatta, these communities are herders, who graze their sheep and goats and live fairly traditionally. Because they are under constant attack, volunteers stay with them when they herd their livestock, and when they see settlers they start filming, and make themselves known.
Chabbott said there were multiple occasions when violence erupted, but as soon as he raised his voice and the settlers heard his foreign accent, they would either stop immediately or get on their ATVs and leave.
Trump lifting sanctions on settlers: escalating violence against Palestinian farmers
The violence has escalated since Trump lifted all sanctions on settlers, but despite the many challenges, Palestinians continue to resist and, according to Chabbott, are still confident they will eventually overcome their occupier. He said:
It’s pretty amazing that there’s still a really high level of confidence that it’s just a matter of time before they get their land back. The state of Israel isn’t going to last!
Palestinian farmers, herders, and rural communities rely on the support and safety provided by volunteers, to remain on their land and resist displacement, settler violence, and land theft, and there has never been a more important time to stand with them.
Join the International Solidarity Movement
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led movement which is committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land through non-violent direct action. It collaborates with Palestinian groups such as Jordan Valley Solidarity, and Faz3a, to place volunteers where they are most needed. These volunteers provide an essential and invaluable protective presence, witness and document violations, while also staying with families and gaining a valuable insight into the way of life of Palestinian farmers and herders. For more information:
- Contact International Solidarity Movement at [email protected] To keep you safe, they ask that you make contact using an email address that does not include your legal name.
- Contact Jordan Valley Solidarity network at [email protected]
- Union of Agricultural Work Committees has also launched an urgent international volunteer campaign, which has two phases: Solidarity Shields during the summer (July-August) and Olive Harvest in the fall (October-November).
- To learn more, and apply to volunteer, visit this website and fill out the International Volunteer Interest Form.
Featured image and additional images supplied and via the ISM
