Settlement has been a main pillar of the Israeli colonial project since Israel occupied the Palestinian territories known today as the West Bank, in 1967.

The Israeli occupation authorities have implemented settlement in a phased manner and using different methods, which include pastoral settlement expansion that has drastically increased across the West Bank for over a decade.

Peoples Dispatch spoke to Jamal Jumaa, a Palestinian activist and expert in Israeli settlement and apartheid-related issues, who is also the coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (known as Stop the Wall), to discuss pastoral settlement.

Mr. Jamal Jumaa described the pastoral settlement as one of the most dangerous aspects of the Israeli colonial project, which aims to displace Palestinians, and evict them from their own lands in “C” areas (administered by Israel as per the Oslo Accords).

Jumaa explained that since 1967, the Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley have been a target for Israel’s systematic ethnic cleansing practices.

Israel first declared most of the areas in the Jordan Valley as military zones, where the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) chased Palestinian Bedouins and shepherds from one area to another by helicopters and military vehicles, and shot their animals.

The livestock of those communities was also subjected to confiscation by Israeli soldiers, who used to load them in trucks and take them away to cattle quarantine stations. Palestinians had to pay a high fine valued at 11 Jordanian Dinars (equal to USD 15.5) per night for each sheep kept in one of these stations.

Blocking the shepherds and farmers from accessing water resources, including the Jordan River, historical wells, and natural springs, was another practice pursued by the IOF against these communities. Some of these water resources were even diverted to other areas, drying them up.

Israel’s annihilating practices did not stop there as they also deprived these communities from basic services including healthcare, schools, kindergartens and road networks.

In 1997, the Israeli occupation authorities began to demolish and remove the dwellings and properties of the Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley, after its previous ethnic cleansing practices failed to uproot them from their lands. The pastoral settlement policy has developed ever since.

As Palestinians emerged more determined to stay on their lands, despite all of the extermination attempts, Israel began to send settlers to besiege their communities, preventing the people residing there from herding their livestock in nearby pastures. To exert further pressure on these Palestinian citizens, settlers have impeded their children from reaching their schools.

According to Jumaa, Israeli settlement institutions began to recruit illegal Israeli colonists to assault Palestinians in these communities in order to push them towards displacement as a paid job as of 2014. These settlers have been also tasked with vandalizing, looting, and confiscating agricultural lands and farms of Palestinian citizens.

“Such assaults simply begin with an illegal settler or a few settlers heading with a flock of livestock to a Palestinian Bedouin community or an agricultural land, then place themselves at the center of that area,” Jumaa noted.

“These settlers know that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) are deployed at close proximity to them and are ready to defend them, if the Palestinian residents of the community or owners of the lands try to expel them,” the Palestinian activist asserted.

“Once stationed at the heart of the targeted community, settlers start to attack the Palestinians living there. They also loot or kill their livestock, launch arson attacks and carry out other violent acts. All of this happens under the protection of the IOF,” he continued.

Jumaa indicated that after a short while the Israeli occupation authorities would set up caravans in the targeted areas for these settlers, and supply them with water and electricity networks.

He suggested that by doing so, Israel creates what is known as settlement outposts, which in turn link bigger settlement blocks and clusters across the West Bank with each other.

The Palestinian expert argued that Israel has always sought to encircle Palestinians in the West Bank from all sides and directions, horizontally, and vertically with settlement projects of all sizes and types.

Jumaa also suggests that the apartheid wall was established to frame Israel’s broader colonial project. Israel claims to have constructed the wall to separate the territories occupied in 1948 from those occupied in 1967 for “security reasons”.

Nevertheless, facts on the ground confirm that the wall absorbed large swathes of territories inside the West Bank in both “A” areas – presumably administered by the Palestinian Authority – and “B” areas – meant to be under the joint administration of the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

The 700 kilometer-long wall hedges 200 settlements and 180 to 200 settlement outposts which, alongside over 898 checkpoints and gates, fragment the Palestinian territories in the West Bank.

From Jumaa’s point of view, all these settlement policies were designed to dismantle and split the Palestinian population and territories, culturally, socially, geographically, and economically.

Pastoral settlement policies resemble the mass slaughter of American bison by European colonists in 1800s, says Jumaa

Jumma compared the systematic acts of vandalization and looting of Palestinian agricultural land and livestock to an ethnic cleansing policy implemented by European colonists in the 1800s. Those colonists were slaughtering the American bison (or buffalo) in large numbers to deprive native Americans from their major source of livelihood.

Native Americans relied on bison not only as a source of food but also, clothing, shelter, tools, jewelry and in ceremonies. Thus, European colonists decimated millions of the bison to devastate the Indigenous people of the land. The mass slaughter of the American bison represented an ecological disaster, which brought the species to the brink of extinction.

They destroyed my paradise and my resort for peace of mind, says Manhal al-Malki from Ramallah

The destruction-based approach does not seem to have changed since the 1800s. The story of Mr. Manhal al-Malki, a Palestinian man from Kafr Malik village east of the central West Bank governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, is reminiscent of the mass slaughter of the bison for native Americans.

The 51-year-old Palestinian industrial engineer shared the details of the tragedy with Peoples Dispatch, which he has endured after losing his lifelong dream project at the hands of illegal Israeli colonists.

In 2018, Al-Malki embarked on an agricultural project, which he had always been looking forward to initiating. That same year he planted 160 avocado trees, 60 lemon trees and 380 grape trees in a land which he jointly owns with another Palestinian citizen.

After planting the trees, the Palestinian engineer, who had previously worked in big local food manufacturing companies, waited for five years before starting to sell high quality neatly-packed fruit and vegetables as planned.

“Such types of trees take a number of years to bear fruits of certain quality before they are ready for sale in the market. Once the trees in our farms reached that level in 2023, the IOF blocked the road leading to our farm and those owned by other Palestinian residents of my village,” Al-Malki said.

He further explained that the IOF set up a gate in that road, forcing them to take a longer route to reach their farms. Consequently, the journey that previously took them 15 minutes by car, has taken them around an hour and a half. This, however, did not deter Mr. Manhal from going to his farm in order to protect his trees from wilting away.

Nonetheless, the harm inflicted by the Israeli occupation authorities on the farmers of Kafr Malik was exacerbated after Israeli settlers began to vandalize the unfenced farms. At that point, the farm of Mr. Manhal had not been damaged yet, due to being fenced by a wall, with a locked gate.

In mid-2024, Al-Malki was shattered after being informed that his farm was subjected to a barbaric attack by those settlers. The hate-driven offenders broke down the farm gate, stole the water tank used to irrigate the trees, and allowed their sheep to roam throughout the lush land, turning it into ruins.

“It was not a mere project. It was my paradise where I spent the best times of my life, and a resort that granted me peace of mind,” the distressed Palestinian man said with a lump in the throat.

“I was dreaming of making it an ideal farm, through which I would have provided the needed expertise and assistance to the farmers of my village,” he added.

Besides the moral harm, Mr. Manhal has endured a financial loss estimated at USD 150,000. Furthermore, he has been left with no source of income because he had quit his career as a manager in a Palestinian company, when he decided to initiate his dream project.

Mr. Manhal was not the only person to lose his source of income due to this tragic incident. Two other Palestinians, who worked for him, lost their jobs as such.

Despite his agony, Mr. Manhal affirmed that he still hopes to revive his farm and restore his project, which he keeps looking at from a distance. He believes that this is still possible as long as he remains steadfast, and if the Palestinian people persist in their unified struggle against the occupation.

It is worth noting that Al-Malki’s ruined agricultural project, which he called “Samia Orchards” is located near Ain Samia’s water wells, a vital water supply infrastructure to dozens of villages and towns in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh governorate.

Ain Samia’s water system has been subjected to repeated attacks by Israeli settlers in recent months, which resulted in depriving 70,000 Palestinians of access to water.

The post Paradise lost: a Palestinian farmer on settler violence and dispossession appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

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