The death knell for the Palestinian village of Atouf, on the western slopes of the Jordan valley, arrived in the form of a trail of paper, a series of eviction notices taped to homes, greenhouses and wells, marking a straight line across the open fields.<\/p>\n
The notices, which appeared overnight, informed the local farmers that their land would be confiscated and that they had seven days from the date of their delivery, 4 December, to vacate their properties. A military road and accompanying barrier was to be built by Israel<\/a> right through the area.<\/p>\n Lawyers for the Atouf village council have lodged an appeal, but long and bitter experience has taught Palestinians here to have low expectations of Israeli courts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Israeli military can do anything they like. They don\u2019t care about the law or anything else,\u201d said Ismael Bsharat, a local farmer.<\/p>\n Similar eviction notices had been delivered on the same day all along an almost 14-mile (22km) strip of Palestinian farmland running north to south through Atouf, tracing out the route of the planned road and fence. And this week it became clear that this abrupt gash across Palestinian land was the first section of a new line of division that would redraw the map of the West Bank<\/a>.<\/p>\n This week, Israel\u2019s defence ministry made clear that this would mark only the first section of a new 5.5bn-shekel (\u00a31.3bn) barrier that will eventually run 300 miles, from the Golan Heights on the Syrian border to the north all the way down to the Red Sea near Eilat. Labelled \u201cCrimson Thread\u201d by the Israeli military, the barrier will split countless Palestinian communities along its route.<\/p>\n Map showing location of Jordan valley barrier and new military road in West Bank<\/a><\/p>\n The army says the barrier is being built for security reasons, but human rights activists say there has been only one lethal incident anywhere near Atouf in recent years in which an Israeli was killed. They argue the real motive is land seizure and the further strangling of Palestine\u2019s prospects as a viable state.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is happening all through the Jordan valley, especially in the north. Israel is pushing forward, and accelerating the ethnic cleansing of this area,\u201d said Dror Etkes, an Israeli activist who is the founder of the Kerem Navot<\/a> organisation, which monitors Israeli land policy in occupied Palestine.<\/p>\n The fertile land around the village of Atouf in the West Bank. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Israel has consistently rejected accusations of ethnic cleansing from Israeli and international human rights organisations, including UN rapporteurs, dismissing them as fabricated propaganda. It also denies the colonisation of occupied territory by settlers is illegal under international law.<\/p>\n Etkes said almost all (85%) of the 1,000 dunams (100 hectares) subjected to the initial round of eviction orders around Atouf were privately owned. These fields are among the most fertile in the West Bank, their rich dark-brown soil built up over millennia by tributaries flowing east to the River Jordan. The area has long been one of Palestine\u2019s breadbaskets.<\/p>\n Most of the affected families had farmed the land for generations, and some had bought new parcels at high prices in recent years. All held title deeds, but none of that is likely to alter the outcome of the looming land grab.<\/p>\n Lawyers for the local Palestinian municipality lodged an appeal against the eviction in an Israeli court but had received no response by the end of this week. The expectation is that Israeli settlers will take over the excised land. A new settlement is planned just west of the new military road.<\/p>\n Abdullah Bsharat, the head of Atouf\u2019s village council, leaves the council building. Several farmers have received an Israeli military order to confiscate part of their lands. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Across the West Bank, settlements are being planned and built at an unprecedented rate. According to the Peace Now advocacy group, tenders have been published<\/a> for more than 5,600 housing units so far this year \u2013 an all-time record and 50% more than the previous peak in 2018.<\/p>\n Those are only the officially endorsed settlements. New settler outposts (often just a small cluster of huts or portable buildings) are springing up along the valley at an accelerating pace. Though officially unauthorised, they are enabled in practice by the army and police, backed by far-right members of the governing coalition.<\/p>\n At least one Palestinian farmer in Atouf has already begun moving his livestock in anticipation of eviction, but Bsharat said he would stay put and see what happens. He has little choice. On a winter evening this week, he was going to market with boxes of fresh green peppers grown in his plastic-sheet greenhouses. All his 12 dunams (1.2 hectares) of land lie east of the proposed military road and barrier, and are fed by water pipes running from the hilltops to the west. Those will all be severed when the army arrives to build the road and the barrier.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat can I do? I can\u2019t farm without water,\u201d Bsharat said.<\/p>\n Arafat Bsharat will lose most of his farming land. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Abdullah Bsharat, the village council leader (who is from the same extended family as Ismael) predicted that up to 40 families from Atouf would be cut off from the village and their water supply.<\/p>\n \u201cAll these families have title deeds,\u201d he said. \u201cThey grow grapes, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, bananas, za\u2019atar and olives. This land is very rich and that is the reason it is being taken. The whole aim is to take it over for settlers to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n The council leader said he had been told by Israeli officers that the road and barrier would together be 50 metres wide, but Palestinian buildings or farmwork would not be allowed along a 200-metre cordon on either side. There was no official confirmation from the army of such a wide exclusion zone, but if true it would greatly increase the economic damage inflicted on Atouf.<\/p>\n Abdullah Bsharat points towards some of the lands that will be taken by Israel. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum\/The Guardian<\/p>\n At one point along its course the planned barrier will loop around and completely enclose a Palestinian sheep herding community at Khirbet Yarza, who have so far resisted increasing pressure from settlers and the army to move off their 400 dunams of land,. It is not clear if they will be left any means to get in and out of the fence that will be built around them.<\/p>\n