In March, Israeli authorities declared an area of 8 square kilometers near the village of Jiftlik in the occupied West Bank as Israeli land.
The area is located in the Jordan Valley, close to Edai’s home, and it functioned until the Israeli decision in March as a grazing area for the farmer’s goats.
For Edais, the decision could mean that his livelihood disappears. As the grazing areas are gone, he has had to buy expensive feed to keep the rest of the goat herd alive.
Vicious circle
– Do you see these troughs? We have had to sell some of the goats in order to feed the others. In a year, we won’t have any goats left, says the 65-year-old to the AFP news agency.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War in 1967 and has established a number of settlements in violation of international law. Over the years, Israel has seized more and more areas, in many cases to make room for new Israeli settlers.
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This means that at the same time they become inaccessible to the original Palestinian population.
Today, there are around 490,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, which has 3 million Palestinian inhabitants, and who are supposed to form the main part of a future Palestinian state.
All records broken
According to the Israeli organization Peace Now, this year Israel has broken all previous records in terms of the seizure of Palestinian land.
So far this year, areas totaling 10,971 dunams – or around 11 square kilometers – have been seized by Israel. It has happened at the same time as the world’s attention has been focused on the war in Gaza, which has left the Palestinian enclave in ruins and killed more than 34,000 of its inhabitants.
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According to Peace Now, the previous record was set in 1999, when Israel seized 5.2 square kilometers of the occupied territory, half as much as the seizures so far this year.
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Declaring an area as state means that the Israeli government considers itself the owner. Technically speaking, according to Israeli law, it should have no say in how the area is used by the local population, not before construction projects are possibly initiated or transferred to private owners.
In 2018, however, Peace Now was able to document that 99.76 percent of the seized areas were used for purposes related to the illegal Israeli settlements.
View to Israeli base
The patch of land on which Edais and 50 of his relatives have lived since 1976 is on the border with Jordan, and from here they can see the settlement of Masua and an Israeli military base.
He says that before the Israeli decision took effect, the family’s goats were stolen by settlers, who claimed they were grazing in a prohibited area.
To get them back, his family was forced to pay a total of 150,000 shekels – or 430,000 kroner – to an administrative council representing around 20 settlements in the area.
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Human rights groups have directed sharp criticism against Israel’s increasing use of this type of tactics to expel Palestinians from areas that settlers want to control.
The Israeli Defense Ministry has a separate office responsible for civilian Palestinian affairs, COGAT, but it did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
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The Palestinian construction worker Hamad Audi (55), who lives in the village of Jiftlik, is not surprised by what happened to Edais.
– The law is in the hands of the settlers, and the Israeli state supports them, he says.
Will demolish house
According to Audi, many of the residents of the village have received notice from the Israeli authorities that their houses will be demolished, and one has already been demolished.
In March, Israel declared an area of 200,000 square meters outside the village as an archaeological site, after which it was placed under the administration of the Jordan Valley settlers.
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The site, which formerly housed a prison from the time when Palestine was a British mandate, is now inaccessible to Palestinians who live nearby.
Yonatan Mizrahi, who heads Peace Now’s monitoring of Israeli settlement policy, says that last year a great many Israeli development projects were implemented in the West Bank.
The increase has occurred after Israel got its most right-wing government ever. It consists, among other things, of extreme politicians who want Israel to annex the entire West Bank, and who are pushing for a sharp expansion of the settlements.
Want a buffer zone
According to Mizrahi, many Israelis believe that the Jordan Valley should be under Israeli control so that it can function as a buffer zone between the West Bank and Jordan. This despite the fact that Israel entered into a peace agreement with Jordan in 1994.
He says that the Palestinian population in the Jordan Valley, many of them farmers, have very little to say.
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At the same time, the Israeli government has given more power to the local settler administration and stepped up financial support for the settlements.
Several so-called outposts have received the government’s blessing, although they are not only illegal under international law but also under Israeli law.
Fears displacement
Hamad Audi fears for the future.
– I expect that the entire Palestinian population in the Jordan Valley will be displaced, he says.
Goat farmer Talib Edais believes that Israel has used the war in Gaza to step up the seizure of land in the West Bank.
– They found an excuse to expel people. but here there is no war. The war in Gaza is 200 kilometers away from us, he says.
