In order to construct a 22-km long `barrier,` the IDF will demolish homes, sheep pens and infrastructure that `constitute an operational vulnerability,` according to a military document. One of the villages will be entirely surrounded by the fence. Residents of the area were only given a few days to file objections
The army is in advanced stages of constructing a new separation barrier deep inside the Jordan Valley, at least 12 kilometers west of the Jordanian border. The barrier will separate Palestinian farming villages and shepherding communities from their lands, and sever these Palestinian communities from one another, following the model of the separation barrier in the western West Bank.
At this stage, the planned northern Jordan Valley segment is 22 kilometers long and 50 meters wide, and the army intends to demolish all structures and infrastructure within its footprint – homes, sheep pens, greenhouses, storage buildings, pipelines, water cisterns, vegetation and more. According to a security source, this is the third section of the full barrier. Haaretz`s inquiry about the full planned route was not answered by the time of publication.
On Sunday this week – just 10 days after residents learned that the army intended to seize their land for military purposes – representatives of the Civil Administration instructed five families to demolish and dismantle within seven days the structures and greenhouses that lie along the southern part of the planned segment, between Ein Shibli and Khirbet Atouf.
The planned segment is also meant to encircle, in a loop, the shepherding community of Khirbet Yarza, an area of about 400 dunams where 70 people live off the raising of several thousand sheep. This encirclement greatly worries the residents, who do not know what additional movement restrictions the army intends to impose on them, nor what arrangements it plans for their access to schools, clinics, markets and other services in nearby towns, or for taking their flocks out to pasture.
A "natural barrier" that is not natural
In a document from late August signed by Central Command chief Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth, the new separation barrier is described as part of a military project called "Hut HaShani" ("Crimson Thread"). According to the document, which reached Haaretz, it will consist of a paved patrol road that will be accompanied in some parts by a "natural barrier" and in others by earthen embankments and trenches. A security source told Haaretz that the "natural" barrier is in fact a fence to be built by the Defense Ministry.
The width of the barrier and the patrol route itself will be 10 meters, with an additional 20 meters of "security space" on each side along the entire route. The barrier, Bluth writes, is intended to prevent weapons smuggling and protect settlers in the area. "In order to establish operational control over the patrol route, senior operational officials in Central Command found that it is necessary to remove the structures near it," since, according to Bluth, "the existing construction clusters in close proximity to the planned barrier route constitute an operational vulnerability."
In Bluth`s view, these tents, shacks and sheep pens "significantly increase the feasibility of carrying out hostile activity" against the forces travelling along the security road next to the barrier, and therefore "their removal constitutes a clear operational security necessity." The security source, who requested anonymity, told Haaretz that the reference is to "around 60 construction components, including light construction, tents, greenhouses and agricultural plots," and that "the DCO (Liaison and Coordination Office, which is part of Israel`s semi-military semi-civilian Civil Administration) provided an assessment of the potential harm after a professional analysis."
The source added that the idea of building the barrier took shape after the shooting attack at the Mehola junction in August 2024, in which Yonatan Deutsch of Beit She`an was killed.
The new barrier, which will in practice sever various access routes for Palestinians, adds to existing movement restrictions: locked iron gates on side roads, the closed Tayasir checkpoint to the north, and the Hamra checkpoint where vehicles are delayed for long hours. Dror Etkes of the Kerem Navot organization, which researches Israeli land takeover in the West Bank, estimates that the current stage of the "Hut HaShani" project will disconnect farmers and landowners from the areas of the towns of Tammun, Tubas, Tayasir and Aqaba – from some 45,000 dunams (11,120 acres) of their land that will be trapped between the Allon Road and the new barrier.
The demolition orders given to families this week were preceded by nine land-seizure orders that Bluth had already signed on August 28. But they were brought to residents` attention only on November 20 and 21, when they were hung on poles and trees and placed in the office of the Jenin DCO – almost three months after they were issued. Afterward, a WhatsApp message was also sent to the head of the Palestinian liaison committee in Tubas.
Residents were given only seven days – meaning until the end of last week – to submit objections. "Two of those days were Friday–Saturday, and four days we were under curfew [during an extended army raid in the area] and couldn`t prepare copies of the land-ownership documents," says Mukhlis Masa`id, a resident of Khirbet Yarza.
Nonetheless, according to the security source, the seven days allotted for submitting the objections will be counted starting from the survey that the landowners are supposed to conduct with the army today (Wednesday).
The total area of the current seizure is 1,093 dunams. According to Etkes` measuring, most of it is privately owned by Palestinians from Tubas and Tammun, except for about 110 dunams defined as state land. Because each order referred to a small section of the barrier, it took time to understand the full picture. Attorney Tawfiq Jabareen, who represents Palestinian residents of the Jordan Valley, learned of the orders and their full implications only last Thursday, November 27. That was during a hearing in other petitions of his to the High Court of Justice against demolition orders in villages in the area, issued for the lack of a building permit. To his surprise, state prosecutor Maya Zifin asked to cancel the interim injunction freezing the orders, which the High Court had issued last year, arguing that the reason for the demolitions is now security-related.
The next day, Jabareen submitted an initial objection to the construction of the barrier. Among other things, it argued that there is a well-secured border between Jordan and the valley, and it is implausible that an additional barrier in the heart of the valley would be what prevents the smuggling of weapons. Jabareen also argued that the communities in need of protection from terror are the Palestinian ones, which suffer repeated settler attacks.
Pushing Palestinians into the A and B enclaves
Palestinian farming villages and dozens of shepherding communities have been spread throughout the Jordan Valley since before the establishment of the state of Israel. Many developed gradually as outlying offshoots of large mountain-slope villages. As the population grew, sheep herds required additional water sources and grazing areas, and cultivated land needed to be expanded. Seasonal offshoots became permanent villages. Some villages are populated by Bedouins who are 1948 refugees, and others of shepherds from Samu`a and Yatta in the southern West Bank who, after 1967, found their grazing areas and water sources reduced by settlement construction and migrated northward.
Mukhlis Masa`id of Khirbet Yarza, Attorney Jabareen, Mu`ayyad Sha`ban – head of the Palestinian committee resisting the separation fence and settlements – and Dror Etkes are convinced that the new barrier is another step in realizing Israel`s intention to remove all Palestinian communities from the fertile Jordan Valley. In Sha`ban`s view, the barrier will strengthen the process of de-facto annexation being carried out by Israel. In the past two years, following repeated settler attacks, 500 Palestinians in the northern Valley have been forced to leave their homes: four entire communities comprising roughly 300 people, and another 240 people from five other communities, according to B`Tselem data.
The communities that remain in their sites can no longer take their herds to pasture: either because of direct harassment by Israelis, or because settlers have fenced off vast grazing areas and taken over the springs. Israelis in the area also block farmers` access to their land, and there are daily reports of damage to agricultural equipment such as irrigation pipes and greenhouses.
In addition to seven long-standing settlements, there are also 16 unauthorized Israeli outposts in the area from the northern Jordan Valley to the Hamra/Beka`ot checkpoint. The first was established in 2012; nine were established between 2016 and 2023; and six in the past two years. According to Etkes, the barrier and the continued pushing of Palestinians off their lands will facilitate the establishment of more outposts.
The expulsion of communities carried out over the past two years was preceded by decades of Israeli policy meant to prevent the development of Palestinian communities in the area. Alongside the unofficial adoption of the Allon Plan – which sought to include the Jordan Valley in Israeli territory – the army declared large areas of the valley firing zones closed to Palestinian presence, despite the fact that Palestinian communities lived there and made their living from grazing and farming. Israel also forbade additional construction in the permanent villages and prohibited connecting other communities to water and electricity infrastructure. In the 2000s, further severe movement restrictions were added, which at times even limited entry to the area for Palestinians not registered as Jordan Valley residents.
In addition, the Civil Administration frequently demolished – and does so to this day – the simple structures these communities were forced to build without permits, cut irrigation pipes extended to their fields, confiscated tractors and water tankers, and fined vehicles transporting water to them for "slow driving." According to residents, every possible signal was given that they should move westward, across Allon Road. With the construction of the barrier, Attorney Jabareen concludes, the message is that they must move even further west, into the A and B enclaves that are under Palestinian Authority control.
IDF Spokesperson`s Response: "At the basis of the project lies a clear military need, to regulate and monitor vehicular movement between the eastern border and the [Jordan] Valley on the one hand, and the cluster of villages and the rest of Judea and Samaria on the other, in order to prevent weapons smuggling and thwart the carrying out of attacks and subsequent escapes into the depths of the various [military-defined] zones. The orders were signed as part of advancing the development one of the project`s segments and were placed in the field as customary."
Related articles:
Under the radar, quiet and persistent population transfer is underway in the West Bank Amira Hass
Shepherd communities vanish under settler terror. A journey through an abandoned land Gideon Levy
West Bank barrier, Palestinian homes may be relocated to make room for incineration plant Nir Hasson
Photo on front page: Arson by settlers in the village of Bardala in the Jordan Valley in April. Settler violence is also pushing the residents out of the area. Source: Mohammad Sawafteh. Image on this page: Map of the "Hut HaShani" Barrier. Source: Kerem Navot.
