Palestinians Fear Displacement from an Annexed Jordan Valley

A view of the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Efraim on the hills of the Jordan Valley, February 18, 2020. (AP)
A view of the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Efraim on the hills of the Jordan Valley, February 18, 2020. (AP)
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Palestinians Fear Displacement from an Annexed Jordan Valley

A view of the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Efraim on the hills of the Jordan Valley, February 18, 2020. (AP)
A view of the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Efraim on the hills of the Jordan Valley, February 18, 2020. (AP)

For generations, the people of Fasayil herded animals on the desert bluffs and palm-shaded lowlands of the Jordan Valley. Today, nearly every man in the Palestinian village works for Jewish settlers in the sprawling modern farms to the north and south.

The grazing lands to the west and east, leading down to the banks of the biblical Jordan River, have been swallowed up by the settlements or fenced off by the Israeli military. So instead of leading sheep out to pasture, the men rise before dawn to work in the settlements for around $3 an hour — or they move away, reported The Associated Press.

“Everyone here works in the settlements, there’s nothing else,” said Iyad Taamra, a member of the village council who runs a small grocery store. "If you have some money you go somewhere else where there is a future.”

Palestinians fear communities across the Jordan Valley will meet a similar fate if Israel proceeds with its plans to annex the territory, which accounts for around a quarter of the occupied West Bank and was once seen as the breadbasket of a future Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex the valley and all of Israel's far-flung West Bank settlements, in line with President Donald Trump's Middle East plan, which overwhelmingly favors Israel and has been rejected by the Palestinians. The process could begin as soon as July 1.

Netanyahu has said Israel will annex the land but not the people who rely on it, telling an Israeli newspaper they will remain in an “enclave” under limited self-rule, with Israel maintaining security control.

Few if any Palestinians would be given citizenship, leaving their legal status uncertain. In a region that heavily relies on agriculture, the loss of farm and grazing land could force many to relocate.

Shaul Arieli, a retired Israeli military commander who worked on border demarcation during the peace process in the 1990s, estimates that the Palestinians would lose up to 70,000 acres (280 square kilometers) of private land. He expects Israel will carve out a new 200-kilometer (124-mile) border between the Jordan Valley and the rest of the West Bank, and a 60-kilometer (37-mile) border around the Palestinian city of Jericho.

He based his conclusions on maps presented by Netanyahu and the White House, which show Israel extending sovereignty over large swaths of land while leaving most populated areas outside its borders.

Itay Epshtain, a special adviser to the Norwegian Refugee Council, said Palestinians would lose some of the limited protections they have, once Israeli courts are no longer formally obliged to consider international laws related to military occupation.

"Palestinians void of civil status in Israel, and not coming under the authority of the military commander, would neither have standing in the High Court nor the ability to challenge decisions of the government," he said, according to the AP.

The Jordan Valley is home to around 60,000 Palestinians, according to the UN., but nearly 90 percent of the land is part of what is known as Area C, the three-fifths of the West Bank that is under complete Israeli control. In the Jordan Valley, it includes closed military areas and around 50 agricultural settlements housing some 12,000 Israelis.

Palestinians are barred from those areas, and even on the lands they own, they are forbidden from digging wells or building any kind of infrastructure without hard-to-get military permits. From 2009 until 2016, less than 2 percent of more than 3,300 permit applications in Area C were successful, according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group, citing official statistics.

Anything built without a permit, from home extensions to tents, animal pens and irrigation networks, is at risk of demolition by the Israeli military.

“If you dig a well, they will come the next day and fill it with concrete," said Hani Saida, a farmer from the town of al-Auja. "They may annex this area, but they will never give us equal rights. They’ll keep trying to drive us away.”

COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees civilian affairs in the West Bank, declined to comment.

Abdul-Malik al-Jaber, a Canadian-Palestinian businessman and the chairman of a large company that exports dates from the Jordan Valley, says the process of obtaining permits is a “nightmare,” even for big investors.

“There’s no way on earth a normal, simple farmer can afford the cost and the complications," he said.

Al-Jaber said his company has spent the last two months and around $35,000 trying to secure a permit to build a modern date-packing plant on land he owns. He was told the Israeli military considers it a training area, even though farmers live there and work the land.

He fears annexation will only make things more difficult, by cutting off workers from the company's fields and factories and further complicating the export process.

Israel's annexation plans have sparked an international outcry, with European and Arab countries warning that it would violate international law and threaten any remaining hopes for a two-state solution.

But in the Jordan Valley and elsewhere in the West Bank the response has been more muted.

“From 1967 until today, water for drinking, water for agriculture, the border, the crossings, the roads, the government lands in Area C between the villages and the cities, the entrances to the towns — all of them are under Israeli control," said Mohannad Saida, a cousin of Hani.

“Nothing is going to change,” he said.

He said his family owns around 750 acres (3 square kilometers) north of al-Auja, stretching to the banks of the Jordan River. They fled during the 1967 war, when Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan and their land was sealed off as a military zone.

Over the years, they would drive into the hills to look down over the land. About 15 years ago, they noticed rows of freshly planted date trees, an extension of a nearby settlement.

A few years later, a relative who worked as a bulldozer driver was able to enter the area for an Israeli construction project. He took pictures of the mud-brick homes where their ancestors had been born and raised.

“We saw our mud houses," Saida said. "They are still standing.”



Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The Iran-Israel war has helped strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu domestically and overseas, just as his grip on power looked vulnerable.

On the eve of launching strikes on Iran, his government looked to be on the verge of collapse, with a drive to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jews threatening to scupper his fragile coalition.

Nearly two years on from Hamas's unprecedented attack in 2023, Netanyahu was under growing domestic criticism for his handling of the war in Gaza, where dozens of hostages remain unaccounted for, said AFP.

Internationally too, he was coming under pressure including from longstanding allies, who since the war with Iran began have gone back to expressing support.

Just days ago, polls were predicting Netanyahu would lose his majority if new elections were held, but now, his fortunes appear to have reversed, and Israelis are seeing in "Bibi" the man of the moment.

– 'Reshape the Middle East' –

For decades, Netanyahu has warned of the risk of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran -- a fear shared by most Israelis.

Yonatan Freeman, a geopolitics expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Netanyahu's argument that the pre-emptive strike on Iran was necessary draws "a lot of public support" and that the prime minister has been "greatly strengthened".

Even the opposition has rallied behind him.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is my political rival, but his decision to strike Iran at this moment in time is the right one," opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed.

A poll published Saturday by a conservative Israeli channel showed that 54 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the prime minister.

The public had had time to prepare for the possibility of an offensive against Iran, with Netanyahu repeatedly warning that Israel was fighting for its survival and had an opportunity to "reshape the Middle East."

During tit-for-tat military exchanges last year, Israel launched air raids on targets in Iran in October that are thought to have severely damaged Iranian air defenses.

Israel's then-defense minister Yoav Gallant said the strikes had shifted "the balance of power" and had "weakened" Iran.

"In fact, for the past 20 months, Israelis have been thinking about this (a war with Iran)," said Denis Charbit, a political scientist at Israel's Open University.

Since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has ordered military action in Gaza, against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as targets in Syria where long-time leader Bashar al-Assad fell in December last year.

"Netanyahu always wants to dominate the agenda, to be the one who reshuffles the deck himself -- not the one who reacts -- and here he is clearly asserting his Churchillian side, which is, incidentally, his model," Charbit said.

"But depending on the outcome and the duration (of the war), everything could change, and Israelis might turn against Bibi and demand answers."

– Silencing critics –

For now, however, people in Israel see the conflict with Iran as a "necessary war," according to Nitzan Perelman, a researcher specialized in Israel at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.

"Public opinion supports this war, just as it has supported previous ones," she added.

"It's very useful for Netanyahu because it silences criticism, both inside the country and abroad."

In the weeks ahead of the Iran strikes, international criticism of Netanyahu and Israel's military had reached unprecedented levels.

After more than 55,000 deaths in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, and a blockade that has produced famine-like conditions there, Israel has faced growing isolation and the risk of sanctions, while Netanyahu himself is the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

But on Sunday, two days into the war with Iran, the Israeli leader received a phone call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has held talks with numerous counterparts.

"There's more consensus in Europe in how they see Iran, which is more equal to how Israel sees Iran," explained Freeman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Israel was doing "the dirty work... for all of us."

The idea that a weakened Iran could lead to regional peace and the emergence of a new Middle East is appealing to the United States and some European countries, according to Freeman.

But for Perelman, "Netanyahu is exploiting the Iranian threat, as he always has."