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<h1><font size=5><b>West Bank Land Grabs: Israeli Settlers Are
Establishing Farms To Push Palestinians Off Their
Land</b></font></h1>
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<a href="https://tlio.org.uk/west-bank-land-grabs-israeli-settlers-are-establishing-farms-to-push-palestinians-off-their-land/">
8 December 2021</a> <a href="https://tlio.org.uk/author/tony/">Tony
Gosling</a>
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<h1><b>Violent Israeli settlers are establishing farms to push
Palestinians off their land</b></h1>Israeli settler violence in the West
Bank isn’t an isolated incident. Rather, nearly every week settlers from
nearby agricultural outposts terrorize the Palestinians of Masafer Yatta
as they take over their land.<br>
<a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2021/11/israeli-settlers-are-establishing-farms-to-push-palestinians-off-their-land/">
https://mondoweiss.net/2021/11/israeli-settlers-are-establishing-farms-to-push-palestinians-off-their-land/</a>
<br>
By <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/author/jessica-buxbaum/">Jessica
Buxbaum</a>
<a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2021/11/israeli-settlers-are-establishing-farms-to-push-palestinians-off-their-land/">
November 29, 2021</a> –
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<img src="cid:7.0.1.0.1.20211208193949.07b7ebb8@cultureshop.org.uk.0" width=512 height=345 alt="Emacs!">
<br>
<i>Palestinians protest as Israeli forces demolish a Palestinian house in
in Masafer Yatta near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank November
25, 2020. <br><br>
</i>On the morning of Nov. 10, Israeli settlers erected sheep pens on
Palestinian agricultural land next to the Masafer Yatta hamlet of
<a href="https://www.972mag.com/khallet-a-daba-settler-attack/">Khallet
a-Daba’</a> in the West Bank. By the evening, the Israeli army dismantled
the illegal outpost, and in response,
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CWIwc6eI7j0/">the settlers
rioted</a> against the Khallet a-Daba’ community. They threw stones. They
shattered car windshields. They uprooted olive trees. They set a hut
ablaze. They fired guns.<br><br>
This violence isn’t an isolated incident. Rather, nearly every week
settlers from nearby agricultural outposts are terrorizing the
Palestinians as they take over their land.<br><br>
Israeli human rights organization
<a href="https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202111_state_business_eng.pdf">
B’Tselem</a> highlighted the attacks originating from settler farms in a
new report released last week. In it, B’Tselem stated 50 outposts have
been built in the West Bank over the last decade with about 40 of them
used for sheep, goat and cattle herding.<br><br>
Seemingly unsatisfied with these land-grabs, settler ranchers are also
actively assaulting Palestinians whose land they’ve stolen as Palestinian
journalist and activist, Basil al-Adraa, described.<br><br>
“They organize very big attacks against us especially on Saturday and on
the Jewish holidays. They use these holidays to collect tens and dozens
of settlers. They come armed with slingshots, sticks and hammers. At
least from May until today, seven of these organized attacks were
committed against my community,” al-Adraa said during a
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/NaamodUK/videos/842557566410967">joint
Breaking the Silence and Na’amod webinar on settler
violence</a>.<br><br>
According to B’Tselem, from the beginning of 2020 to the end of September
2021 451 settler attacks have occurred against Palestinians and their
property, with more than half directed at Palestinian farmers.<br><br>
<img src="cid:7.0.1.0.1.20211208193949.07b7ebb8@cultureshop.org.uk.1" width=390 height=485 alt="Emacs!">
<br><br>
This figure did not include the Jordan Valley in the northern West Bank,
an area experiencing settler violence daily and something farmer Fawzi
Daraghmeh is all too familiar with.<br><br>
“Settlers attack my goats, hitting them in the stomach, in the head and
in the legs,” Daraghmeh said. “They’re always trying to provoke my family
and me and if any of us say anything, the settlers will just call the
army and tell them we attacked them.”<br><br>
Since 2019, Daraghmeh has lost about 250 acres of farmland to the Um Zuqa
settler farm. The amount of grazing land stolen is harder to quantify, he
said, but estimated losing hundreds of acres to settlers.<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>We’re talking about a system, which has a lot of knowledge and
experience. It’s not like someone woke up in the morning and decided they
wanted to be a cowboy.<br><br>
<dd>Dror Etkes<br><br>
</dl>Calculations done by Israeli land policy organization, Kerem Navot,
as part of B’Tselem’s report, found settler farms in the Jordan Valley,
Masafer Yatta and other parts of the West Bank have taken over nearly
7,000 acres in the last five years. However, this number does not include
the entirety of the West Bank, which Kerem Navot founder, Dror Etkes,
said the organization is currently measuring.<br><br>
From Etkes’ conclusions, the phenomenon of settler farms is
intentionally entwined with state policy.<br><br>
“The most important thing [for Israel] right now is to get Palestinians
out of the larger areas in Area C. And in order to do that, you need to
contract settlers to get these Palestinians out, and that’s exactly what
these farms are doing,” Etkes said.<br><br>
As emphasized in B’Tselem’s report, most agricultural outposts are built
with state support in the form of infrastructure, water and farming
subsidies.<br><br>
“Someone tells the military to guard the settlements. Someone designated
the land to begin with and decided where the outpost is going to be. So,
we’re talking about a system, which has a lot of knowledge and
experience. It’s not like someone woke up in the morning and decided they
wanted to be a cowboy,” Etkes said.<br><br>
<h2><b>Settlers as a tool of the state</b></h2>And while settlers are
scoring subsidies, Palestinian farmers are losing money.<br><br>
Ali Awad, a Palestinian activist from the hamlet of Tuba in Masafer
Yatta, comes from a family of shepherds whose primary source of income
has been eradicated by encroaching settler farms.<br><br>
Instead of having their sheep graze on the hillside, Ali’s family now
purchases bales of hay to feed their animals. “We lost our whole
traditional lifestyle,” Ali said. Even the manufactured livestock feed
isn’t immune to settler attacks. In June,
<a href="https://www.972mag.com/settler-violence-south-hebron-hills-fire/">
settlers burned a year’s supply of hay bales</a> Ali’s family
bought.<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“Settler violence is only part of Israeli colonist goals. These
people are used as tools justified by racist laws for committing
ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.”<br><br>
<dd>Ali Awad<br><br>
</dl>Settler expansion has crippled Masafer Yatta’s economy. Two-thirds
of the families in Tuba have left in the last decade. From Ali’s vantage
point, the purpose of these agricultural outposts is to “evict
Palestinians.”<br><br>
“Settler violence is only part of Israeli colonist goals,” Ali said.
“These people are used as tools justified by racist laws for
committing ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.”<br><br>
With the high price of animal feed and without room to graze, Ali’s
family is becoming hopeless.<br><br>
“Every day we think about leaving,” Jaber Awad, Ali’s uncle, said.
“Walking 100 meters [330 feet] out of the home means a settler is
standing in front of you and your flock.”<br><br>
Like the Awad family, Daraghmeh in the Jordan Valley feels trapped.
“Because of these outposts, I feel like I am in jail with my sheep and
goats. We can’t move. We can’t go anywhere.”<br>
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