The Decibel - As conflict rages in Gaza, a ‘silent war’ in the West Bank

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

The Israel-Hamas war is continuing in Gaza, but tension extends to another Palestinian territory, the West Bank. Five hundred Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers or security forces, according to local authorities, and at least nine Israelis have been killed, according to the United Nations. The West Bank is also home to farmland where olive, fig and lemon trees grow. Since Oct. 7, Israeli settlements have expanded and some Palestinian farmers say they’ve lost access to agricultural land.Nathan VanderKlippe, the Globe’s international correspondent, tells us what’s been happening on West Bank farmlands for the past six months and how this is increasing tensions in the region.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Well, that's what I'm asking. Like, how serious is this? Could people start to become hungry because of this or no? Let me give you now the full picture of what's happening. There is a war in Gaza, but another silent war is happening in West Bank. That's The Globe's Nathan Vanderclip speaking with Abbas Milham, the executive director of the Palestinian Farmers Union. He says that farmers in the West Bank

are getting pushed off the land as Israeli settlements expand. The Israel-Hamas war continues in Gaza, but conflicts have also grown in the other Palestinian territory, the West Bank. Since October the 7th, nearly 500 Palestinians have been killed

by Israeli settlers or security forces, according to local authorities. At least nine Israelis have also been killed in the West Bank since then, according to the United Nations. Nathan Vanderclip is the Globe's international correspondent, and he was recently in the West Bank. Today, he'll explain what's been happening on West Bank farmlands since October the 7th, and what expanding Israeli settlements mean for Palestinians who live there. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Nathan, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. So in the intro, we just heard from Abbas Milham.

He calls what's happening on agricultural land in the West Bank a, quote, silent war. Nathan, why does he call it that? Because it's a war without shooting. It's a war that for Palestinians is a war that's not being fought with guns and with the traditional implements of war, but with agricultural implements and often with things like sheep and cattle. And we've seen the last couple of years what some of the Palestinians in the West Bank call shepherd settlers, a shepherding component to settlement. And often there's a geographic component to this. You can imagine a lot of the topography in parts of the West Bank as being hills and valleys. And so many of the communities, both Palestinian and settler communities, are located on the top of hills. The valleys are often where perhaps there's a spring or there's something else, and that's often where agriculture takes place. And so what you're seeing with some of the settlement agriculture is an expansion of

some of the Israeli settlements down from the hilltops and down into some of the valleys around them where lands are being taken and often occupied by grazing herds. And we're going to get into that a little bit more soon, but I think maybe we should just establish, Nathan, you talked about the West Bank. Where exactly is the West Bank? So what's really important when you're thinking about the West Bank is to think about it not in the context of the confines of Israel, where much of the West Bank is actually located to the east of Jerusalem, but with regards to the River Jordan, the River Jordan, which forms a lot of the eastern border of Israel, and the West Bank is in fact areas on the western bank

of the River Jordan. It is an area that has been a source of a great deal of conflict and fought over in a series of wars occupied by Jordan after a war in 1948. And then a war in 1967 brought Israeli occupation forces into the area. And since then, Israel's been sort of an administering or occupation force into the area. And since then, Israel's been sort of an administering or occupation force in the area. And population-wise, do we have a sense of how many people live there? Today, there's about 3 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and about 500,000 Israeli settlers who live in the West Bank. When we say Israeli settlers, I guess,

who do we mean by that? We mean people, largely Jewish people, who have moved into areas in the West Bank. And there is a history of settlement that goes far back in the history, you know, into Ottoman times and before. But I think when people think of settlements, what they often think about is what has taken place in the last number of decades, which are parts of the West Bank that were occupied by Israelis, typically with either sort of state sanction or the state turning a blind eye and then moving towards formalizing their residents down the road. And so you've got a system, it's a very complicated system of formally recognized settlements, as well as outposts. And those outposts are places that are not technically authorized by the Israeli

government. But what often happens is after a number of years, they become formally recognized as being part of existing settlements. And that's been a process that's taken place. But there's been a pretty considerable expansion of settlements and settlers over the years. If you think back to the 90s, when there was the progress towards the Oslo Accords, it seemed as if, you know, perhaps there might be progress towards the Oslo Accords, it seemed as if, you know, perhaps there might be progress towards a Palestinian state and a peace treaty and all the rest. The population of settlers at that time was about 110,000 in the West Bank. This is, we're talking 1993. And that has grown massively since then. I mean, in last year, the population of settlers in the West Bank last year alone was up by 3%. If you look back in the last five years, it's up by 15%. So this has been an area of considerable population expansion.

Yeah. And who governs the West Bank, there are Israeli military that mans checkpoints in and around the West Bank. Those make travel into and out of and through West Bank areas often difficult and slow. But the Palestinian Authority runs sort of municipal services, runs education and other things. So it's a blend of governance. So obviously, what you're saying here, there has been tensions going on here for a long time. We're going to talk about kind of some of the recent tensions since October 7th. Things have been quite elevated. And Nathan, you were just in parts of the West Bank. Can you give us a sense of what it's like in the places that you visited? Yeah, it can be a very, very tense place.

And there is often violence in the West Bank, according to Palestinian authorities, at least, that the number of Palestinians who have been killed since the beginning of the war in the West Bank is right about 500 now. And of course, there have also been some Israeli settlers killed as well. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, in one of the recent incidents, we saw a 14 year old Israeli shepherd who was killed. He left his home in a settlement, left with his with his herds, his flocks, and he didn't come back home. And there were at least two Palestinians who were killed in subsequent attacks. And, you know, houses burned down, cars set on fire, sheep killed. And so some fairly considerable reprisals. And Nathan, when you were in the West Bank, I know you spoke to a farmer, Saman Mohamed Shreita.

Can you tell me about him? What did he say? Well, he is an elementary school teacher. He spent 37 years as an elementary school teacher. But his family also, like many families in the West Bank, have farmland that they tend in addition to other jobs. And for them, it's 400 hectares of land at a short distance away from their house. They live in a town called Masra Garbia. The farm is quite lovely. It's a green valley in between kind of arid limestone hills, and it's filled with trees. There's olive trees, lemon trees, walnuts, pomegranates, figs. And then kind of near the bottom of the valley, there's a spring. You can picture a

backyard pool. It's about the size of a sort of a modest backyard pool. It's about two and a half meters deep. And it's called Ain Harasha. And it's the source of water for the farm, you know, for irrigating vegetables in the summer, hydrating lemon trees, and that sort of thing. And Mr. Sheta's extended family, it says about 40, 50 people depend on the farm, sort of both for some produce and these sorts of things, but also for revenue. Olives in particular are a major source of revenue. And in 2022, for example, the family counted about 120 liter jugs of olive oil that they made from this farm. Each one sells for about 200 bucks. That's about $20,000 in revenue. Last year, because they were interrupted from doing their

harvest, they were able to fill just eight jugs with olive oil. And what did he tell you though about what's been happening since the war began on October 7th? The last time he was able to access his land was October 7th, the day the war started. October 8, he came back with his daughter and they encountered a group of soldiers and settlers and they blocked him. He said there was about 20 of them and they sort of descended upon him and his daughters. They came in and he said somebody pressed a gun to his chest and the soldiers told him, don't come back here again until the war ends.

We've seen in other parts of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley in particular, the Palestinian Farmers Union counts something like 25,000 hectares of land that has become inaccessible to farmers. And to put that in perspective, that is more than twice the size of the city of Vancouver. So it's a fairly expansive area of land that's become inaccessible. Do we have a sense of how much money that represents on a whole here, Nathan? We have some indications. So again, the Palestinian Farmers Union did some tabulations on the value of the olive harvest across the West Bank that was lost last year after the war started. They estimated that only half of the olives were successfully harvested and that the losses from that totaled 60 million U.S. dollars. Of course, we're talking about food here, right, which is obviously essential for people. Do we know if these tensions are actually causing an issue for people in just basically accessing food in this area?

Well, I mean, the Jordan Valley, for example, is a real source also of vegetables. I mean, they grow tomatoes and cucumber and eggplants and peppers and zucchini and cabbage and carrots and all these sorts of things. The estimate is that 90% of the Palestinian consumption of potatoes and onions comes from the Jordan Valley. And so, of course, that's been limited. The estimate is that something like 90% of the grazing area in the Jordan Valley is now difficult, if not impossible, to access for Palestinians. And I think one really striking number is the count of the goat and sheep herds that are maintained by Palestinian farmers. And again, the Palestinian Farmers Union said three years ago, their count was 1.75 million head. By last August, which was their most recent count, it was 700,000. Their estimate

now is that it's probably down at 500,000. And there's also been an increase in hunger. In Ramallah, where I've spent some time, it's now grown more common for people coming in asking for food to come into shops to ask for money or food. The Farmers Union has over 3,000 families to which it's now begun delivering food parcels to help out. We'll be back in a minute. Nathan, we talked a little bit about the Palestinian family that you were speaking with, the farmers there. You also spoke with Israelis in nearby settlements in the West Bank as well. Can you tell us about what they said?

So I spoke with a couple of folks in town from Harsha, which is a settlement community that was established in the late 1990s. There's about 75 families there. It's expanding, though. Very obviously, there was a number of houses that were under construction when I was there. And I spent a bit of time there. I sort of tried to get as close as I could to the spring. A soldier said, you know, you can't go down there. And in fact, on the edge of the community, kind of overlooking some of this farmland, there were rows of dog kennels. And in between each of those dog kennels was a metal cable that was strung. And there were dogs

in some of those kennels, and they were actually chained to those metal cables so they could go back and forth along those metal cables, forming kind of a perimeter in that area. So it was clear that there was an attempt to sort of create a defensive barrier. What they told me was they literally said tall fences make good neighbors. And this notion that it was better to have a buffer zone around their community ever since October 7. And I spoke a little bit with Ilan Giat, who's a spokesman for the community, and he described a decision made in conjunction with the military to treat the surroundings of the settlements as what he called a sensitive and delicate place.

He said, you know, people in Harsha, settlers fear that Palestinians will do everything in their power to continue what happened on October 7th, the idea being that the Palestinians who live nearby have murderous intent. And he faulted nearby Palestinians for supporting Hamas. And then he talked about Mr. Shredda as well. He does everything in his power to prevent Jews from coming to the area. And he described polluting the spring with cow manure in order to prevent, you know, bathing in it by Israeli settlers. And that's true. Mr. Shreda told me that story. He said, yeah, he said there was so much conflict over that because I would go down there and

I would use the spring water to irrigate and that would lower the water in the spring before it refilled and people would come down, find it empty and they'd get angry and it would use the spring water to irrigate, and that would lower the water in the spring before it refilled. And people would come down, find it empty, and they'd get angry, and it would lead to conflict. And I tried to keep people out of it, so I dumped manure in it. So it just gives you a sense of some of the conflict. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of tensions as you're describing here, Nathan. There's something interesting you said a little bit earlier that I want to come back to, this idea of shepherd settlers and how this is a little bit different kind of than, you know, a broader understanding of settler expansion that we talk about, too. Can I ask you directly about shepherd settlers and what exactly does that encompass?

Yeah, it's a question of sort of expanding the bounds of settlement and expanding it from, I suppose, more urban areas, residential areas, and into more agricultural areas. It has added another dimension of conflict in the West Bank. One of the Palestinian farmers I spoke with described livestock being stolen. And some of those livestock are tagged, they're marked. And Palestinian farmers have then seen some of those livestock appearing on grazing lands that have been taken by some of these shepherd settlers. And then, of course, the death of this 14-year-old Israeli settler. And there was an arrest just made of that of a Palestinian man. Israeli authorities called it an act of terrorism, his death. And, you know, it was a really horrific event. And I think really horrified people across Israel and particularly in the settlements. At the same time, you've had, you know, increasing numbers of settlers who are sort of grazing on lands that Palestinians consider to be to be theirs, and in some cases have documentation for

their ownership of. Yeah. What is the state of settler expansion more broadly in the West Bank? When we look at this today, Nathan, what do we know? Well, what we know is that there's been a huge increase over the last 30 years, but I think there's been a real acceleration in the speed of growth, particularly in the last couple of years. We now have Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a prime minister because he's been able to assemble another 3,300 homes after a fatal Palestinian shooting attack. And then there's been another issue of sort of remapping lands to be state-owned lands, Israeli state-owned lands. And this is a government sort of exercise. You know, the Haaretz, which is one of the major newspapers here, has done some tabulations on that and found that between 2018 and 2023, there are about 2,400 hectares of those state lands that were remapped. But since the start of 2024 alone, we're only a few months in, yet they're already looking at 1,100 hectares.

So there's a dramatic increase in that. There's been a real increase in the amount of Israeli state financial support for settlements too. These are budgets that are now spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to support settlements. Canada and other Western countries consider West Bank settlements illegal, of course. Israel disputes this, saying they have an historical claim to that land. Has there been any word from Western governments here, Nathan, on this expansion? Well, there has. And there has, too, in the context of the war in the last few months on some of the violence that we've seen in the West Bank. And that has led to steps that we've not seen before. We've seen sanctions in the US and elsewhere directly against Israeli citizens, Israeli citizens who have been sort of

involved in violence against Palestinians in some ways. Canada, by the way, too, has also promised sanctions against settlers who are involved in violence. We've not yet seen anything concrete from Canada on that. But Canada, the Canadian government has promised to do that. So I guess, what does this change tell you then? I guess you're saying like an unwillingness to tolerate what's happening. But I guess, what is the signal to you about the situation? Well, it signals that, you know, I think what has taken place in Gaza, I think, has really pricked the consciences of people around the world inside and outside of government. And I think in Gaza, there are questions about what is and is not legitimate, particularly given the events of October 7, where we had attacks on Israelis that killed 1,200.

And what is a legitimate response to that? has perhaps allowed for a greater latitude for countries to act and to express some of the broader displeasure over how Israel as a state is using its power toward Palestinians. Nathan, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our intern is Raisa Alibi. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.