The announcement, on March 22, by the Minister of Finance and figure of the Israeli extreme right Bezalel Smotrich, of a seizure of 800 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank, did not really surprise Hamza Zbiedat.
Although the head of the Ma'an Development Center, a Palestinian civil society organization, is based in Ramallah, his family lives in Zubaydat, a village near the West Bank-Jordan border, just north of the vast area now declared as land of the State of Israel.
“Israel has completely controlled the Jordan Valley for at least 15 years,” explains Hamza Zbiedat. “All Israel had to do was announce it.”
The Jordan Valley is a strip of highly fertile agricultural land that stretches 70 kilometers along the border with Jordan. Sparsely populated, it includes many open, undeveloped areas, making it a valuable reserve for future development in the West Bank.
According to the Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem, almost 90% of the Jordan Valley region is in Area C of the West Bank, which remained under Israel's exclusive security and administrative control after the Oslo II agreement of 1995.
The decision to seize part of this territory shows that Benjamin Netanyahu's government intends to continue building settlements, despite the chorus of international condemnation.
“While some in Israel and around the world seek to deny our right to Judea and Samaria (...), we are actively and strategically encouraging settlement throughout the country,” said Bezalel Smotrich – using the biblical term for the West Bank.
The seized area covers 8,000 dunums (800 hectares) located between three Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank: Massu'a, Ma'ale Efrayim and Yafit.
A few weeks earlier, on February 29, Israel seized another 300 hectares in the area of the Jewish settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim in the occupied West Bank.
According to the Israeli anti-settlement organization Peace Now, all of these areas amount to the largest land seizure in Palestinian territory since the Oslo peace accords, signed in 1993.
Now that Israel has declared that swaths of the Jordan Valley belong to it, the Palestinians can no longer use these lands.
“We think this will encourage the expansion of Israeli settlements,” fears Yonatan Mizrachi, co-director of the “settlement monitoring” branch of Peace Now.
Israeli settlements established in the Palestinian territories occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law.
On December 23, 2016, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2334 which orders Israel to "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem", emphasizing that it will not recognize "no changes to the boundaries of June 4, 1967, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed to by the parties through negotiations."
A battle lost in advance
However, this did not prevent the Jewish state from continuing to seize Palestinian territories by declaring them as Israeli state lands.
In recent years, the Housing Ministry has even created subsidized homeownership programs to combat the housing crisis and implemented a lottery system to encourage Israelis to move to West Bank settlements.
The declaration of plots as state land makes it easier for settlers to rent or purchase the plots in question. Rights groups say it is virtually impossible for Palestinians to challenge the statement.
"There is a kind of bureaucracy according to which, if you own the land, you can object within 45 days [following the declaration of plots as state land, editor's note]. But it is de facto official", explains Yonatan Mizrachi . "I would be surprised if the Palestinians [...] went to court [to appeal]."
Until 1967, the Jordan Valley was under Jordanian administration. After the Six-Day War, Israel issued a military order ending land registration throughout the West Bank, meaning Palestinian families often lack documents proving ownership of land. Furthermore, Israeli authorities do not give legal value to tax receipts, the only other means of proving ownership of land.
Declarations of state land in the occupied territories were halted in 1992 under former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But two years after the first election of Benjamin Netanyahu as head of government, in 1996, this practice returned to the agenda. Since then, around 40,000 dunums (around 4,000 hectares) have been designated as state land by Israel, according to Peace Now.
“It may take years before [the land] is used,” says Yonatan Mizrachi. “Then suddenly we might see a new outpost, a new settlement…”
In 2023, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights found that a total of 700,000 Israeli settlers were living illegally in the occupied West Bank.
The annexation announced Friday by Bezalel Smotrich could make it even more difficult for Palestinians to travel in the West Bank, already greatly complicated by current restrictions on movement and multiple Israeli military checkpoints.
"I live in Ramallah. If I decide to go see my parents in the Jordan Valley, for an iftar [the meal to break the fast of Ramadan, Editor's note], it will take me three or four hours to go there, confides Hamza Zbiedat. I don't have time to go there after work and drive another four hours to get home in the evening."
Part of the area seized by Israel is located near east Jerusalem and constitutes what the Palestinians hope will become the heart of their future independent state. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, little progress has been made towards the creation of such a state. Experts, like the United Nations Security Council, say that the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land constitutes a major obstacle to a two-state solution.
Last month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk released a report finding that 24,300 housing units were built between November 2022 and October 2023 in existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This is the highest number ever recorded since the UN census began in 2017.
The Jordan Valley, a natural greenhouse
“The Jordan Valley, home to two of the largest drinking water basins in the West Bank, is very important to Palestinians,” continues Hamza Zbiedat. “It is supposed to be one of the largest regions in the State of Palestine, with immense fertile lands and many resources." The head of the Ma'an Development Center recalls that experts consider it a "natural greenhouse".
"In recent centuries, he insists, most of this land was an open herding area for Palestinian Bedouins or villagers who owned sheep, camels, cows, goats, etc. D "Other Palestinians also grew lemons, oranges and other types of fruit there."
A few years ago, Hamza Zbiedat visited the area now designated as Israeli state land to take photos. He then noticed that the Israelis had started to pave roads and plant date palms.
The Jordan Valley. ©France 24
“Dates have become the most famous crop in the Jordan Valley,” notes Hamza Zbiedat. “Agricultural expansion is significant in this region... Now that the date palms are six or seven years old, the settlers are making hundreds of thousands of shekels of this land [an Israeli shekel is exchanged for 0.25 euro cents].”
“In the fields, the workers are mostly Palestinians. But the owners are the settlers,” he emphasizes.
Although much of the region is uninhabited, further land confiscations would mean "fewer Bedouins, fewer animals, fewer Palestinian farms and a weakening independent Palestinian economy," he sighs. say fewer Palestinians in the Jordan Valley."
The report published last month by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights points to "the spectacular increase in the intensity, severity and regularity of violence committed by Israeli settlers and the State against of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, in particular since October 7, 2023 [date of the Hamas assault on Israeli soil, Editor's note]".
Since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, "a total of 1,222 Palestinians from 19 herding communities have been displaced as a direct result of settler violence" , it is written in the report.
The West Bank has also been the scene of frequent Palestinian attacks against Israelis since the start of the war raging in Gaza.
Bezalel Smotrich, “de facto governor of the occupied West Bank”
“[The settlers] believe that they must expand and protect from the Palestinians what they call a 'land of the state' or 'the land of the patriarchs,' confides Yonatan Mizrachi. They believe that any new settlement brings more security to the region, this is their main philosophy."
“As long as Bezalel Smotrich controls the Civil Administration, he will continue this policy,” he assures.
Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party (HaTzionout HaDatit), is himself a settler and the head of the Israeli Civil Administration in the Palestinian Territories, responsible for managing the territories in the West Bank.
In February 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered him, after a long political battle within his coalition, extensive powers over the planning and approval of construction in the occupied West Bank as well as over land allocation issues. The prime minister said it was no longer necessary for himself and the Israeli defense minister to give an official green light to every stage of settlement construction.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) seated alongside Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich during the weekly cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv, January 7, 2024. © Ronen Zvulun, Reuters
For the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, this decision made Bezalel Smotrich “the de facto governor of the occupied West Bank”. And the latter could ultimately facilitate the annexation of Palestinian territory.
According to Hamza Zbiedat, the most recent land seizure is "a message to the United States to say: 'Okay, you don't want us to invade Rafah [in the south of the Gaza Strip, Editor's note]? So don't say anything about what we are doing in the West Bank."
Bezalel Smotrich announced the seizure of 800 hectares of land on the same day as American Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel to discuss the terms of a truce in the Gaza Strip with Benjamin Netanyahu.
“You know our view on settlement expansion (...), we have a problem with that,” Antony Blinken said when questioned about this decision just before his return to the United States.
On March 14, for the second time since the start of the year, Washington announced sanctions targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank, accusing them of "undermining the stability" of the Palestinian territory.
"It's a way [for Bezalel Smotrich] to put pressure on the American administration so that it refrains from intervening in the affairs of the settlers," said Hamza Zbiedat.
According to him, the ultranationalist minister's announcement also sends a message to Israeli voters. "He tells them: 'Look, we are expanding our settlements in the Jordan Valley'... which the settlers say will forever be a part of Israel. They don't want to give the Palestinians any control over the border [ with Jordan]."
For its part, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry described Bezalel Smotrich's announcement as "a continuation of the extermination and displacement of the [Palestinian] people from their homeland."
“Whatever happens, it is important that people know that we are also experiencing a siege here,” concludes Hamza Zbiedat, referring to the ongoing war in Gaza. “And it is for the benefit of the settlers.”
This article has been adapted from English. The original can be found here.
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