Two Palestinian villages threatened with erasure with new Israeli settlement drive

The Israeli army has started bulldozing lands in the villages of Bardala and Kardala in the north of the West Bank leading to fears of a new wave of Israeli settlement expansion across the occupied Palestinian territory.

The earthwork activity, which began last week, is feared to be the first step toward the construction of a separation wall isolating the two villages and would allow Israel to seize hundreds of thousands of dunams of farmland in the Tubas governorate and parts of the northern Jordan Valley.

Despite the International Court of Justice again affirming in July that Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands is illegal and its "unlawful presence" in the occupied territories should be ended within a year, there has been a spike in settlement expansion since 7 October 2023, coinciding with a dramatic increase in violence against Palestinian communities by both settlers and soldiers.

Activist Ayman Gharib told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, The New Arab's Arabic-language sister edition that bulldozing operations started several days ago with the Israeli army and Civil Administration verbally informing residents that a wall was to be built on their land, threatening the future of the villages.

This wall is expected to stretch from lands in Beit She'an area in Israel (formerly Beisan) inside the Green Line and end at a section of Highway 90, a road spanning from the north of Israel to the south with the central section cutting through the occupied West Bank, close to Bardala and Kardala.

Gharib stressed that if the wall is constructed, it would extend to a point southwest of the two villages and join up with the existing separation wall on Beit She'an lands and Highway 90, effectively encircling Bardala and Kardala.

Hundreds of thousands of dunams of agricultural land from Tubas governorate and the northern Jordan Valley could be seized by the project, something residents perceive as a step towards Israeli annexation and a threat to their livelihoods.

The residents of Bardala and Kardala would be isolated from Tubas and face suffocating restrictions on their movement with gates possibly constructed at the village entrances, effectively sealing them inside their homes.

According to Amir Dawood, a documentation official with the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission (WSRC), the exact purpose of the bulldozing activity remains unclear but it appears Israel intends to build separation wall or establish a settlement outpost on the land.

It comes just days after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that his country planned to annex the West Bank next year, Palestinian land that has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.

This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition.