What does “land stewardship” mean? Too often, here, for us in empire’s heart: a buzzword, a vibe. Images of beautiful fruit. An apologetic story about progress and repair. Accompanied by words like regenerative, sustainable.
What can land stewardship mean? Some examples I will never forget: the bulldozer knocking down an Israeli checkpoint on October 7, 2023. The Gazan children who tell journalists they would rather die than leave this place that is their lifeblood. Housecats kept alive in refugee camps, a group effort to pull a mule out from under the rubble. For under the conditions of settler colonialism, what is stewardship but unending and often bloody defense of the earth under one’s feet?
The geography of Israeli occupation, its efforts to destroy life in order to lay claim to land, extends far beyond Gaza, where in four months over 25,000 Palestinians have been massacred in service of this heinous project. Compelled by my conversation with seedsaver Vivien Sansour and the acts of unwavering love I see from Palestine on my phone every day, I have been learning more about the conditions of Palestinian farmers and shepherds. In this process of reading and listening, the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank has emerged to me as a key site for Palestinian struggles over water access, indigenous nomadic routes, and agricultural practices.
Stretching between Palestine and the western border of Jordan, the Jordan Valley comprises over a fifth of the West Bank. It is a place of rich soil and sandstone aquifers, often several temperatures warmer than the surrounding areas. The Jordan Valley has been described by many as the “breadbasket” of any possible Palestinian state. In spite of desertification brought about by climate change, it still has some of the most fertile land in the region. Because of its abundant resources, the Jordan Valley is a central target of Israeli environmental destruction—decades of the state and its deputized settlers cutting off water lines, killing Palestinians’ animals, destroying shepherds’ dwellings, and seizing farmland. The valley is also a site of the colonial mythmaking performance called homesteading, with settlers establishing farms and livestock enterprises as an efficient way of claiming large swathes of land.
In this issue of the newsletter, I wanted to share some readings and other media that have been helpful to me as I’ve sought information about the histories and politics of the Jordan Valley. Most of these sources focus specifically on the Jordan Valley, but some of them provide context about land and agricultural issues in the surrounding West Bank areas. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza (and always before that), legacy media has continued to fulfill its promise of being a mouthpiece for the imperialist elite. Very few mainstream publications have been exempt from this; a number of the publications linked below have also at times espoused dangerous rhetorics of both sides-ism, platformed Zionists, and trivialized Israel’s genocide. By including articles from them, I don’t aim to condone these publications, but rather to invite you to take from them what you can, to use them as a starting point for independent research, and to seek out the voices and analyses of everyday Palestinians that resound despite and beyond the limits of the news interviewee role and the structural violences of the media industry. If you have resources to add, please feel free to share them in the comment section below.
With love,
Bitter
Maps
Jordan Valley Solidarity map Jordan Valley Solidarity
“Israeli Annexation of the Jordan Valley” Passia, 2021
“Some 46% of the Jordan Valley land is declared closed military zones from where Palestinians communities were ordered to leave.”
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly argued that security considerations would preclude an Israeli withdrawal from the Jordan Valley however a peace agreement with the Palestinians may look like. He unequivocally declared that “Israel will never cede the Jordan Valley. Israel would never agree to withdraw from the Jordan Valley under any peace agreement signed with the Palestinians. And it‘s vital - absolutely vital - that Israel maintain a long-term military presence along the Jordan River.’”
Documentary
The Last Shepherds of the Jordan Valley Al Jazeera, 2012
Study Guides and Compilations
“Essential Readings: Land, Water, and the Environment in Israeli Occupied Palestinian Territories” Jadaliyya; Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative, 2023
“Jordan Valley Ethnic Cleansing – Palestine Remix” Al Jazeera (video and text compilation)
“The Infrastructure of Israeli Settler Colonialism Part I: The Jordan Valley” Jadaliyya (videos and articles)
“Israeli occupation authorities have transformed the eastern part of Wadi Al Maleh into a mine field in addition to transforming the higher ridges to military bases and army firing and training zones. In effect, Palestinian farmers and herders now have access to less than one percent of Wadi al Maleh. The restricted access to water and land has devastated the economic livelihood of Palestinian residents forcing them to leave the Jordan Valley for survival. In 2008 alone, the number of families in the Wadi al Maleh was reduced from 75 to 5.”
Articles
“In the West Bank, pastoral farms are a new tool for settler expansion” Le Monde, 2023
“Israeli settlements are now using sheepfolds to expand their land to the detriment of Palestinian villages, which are increasingly hemmed in and deprived of their pastures. This situation has accelerated since 2017, bolstered by the arrival of the far-right Benjamin Netanyahu's new government.”
“As Israeli settlements thrive, Palestinian taps run dry. The water crisis reflects a broader battle” AP News, 2023
‘People are thirsty, the crops are thirsty,’ said Hazeh Daraghmeh, a 63-year-old Palestinian date farmer in the Jiftlik area of the valley, where some of his palms have withered in the bone-dry dirt. ‘They’re trying to squeeze us step by step,’ Daraghmeh said.”
“Palestinians warn against Israeli attempts to 'empty the Jordan Valley’” New Arab, 2022
“’The number of Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley was more than 300,000 in 1967,’ said Bisharat. ‘The number decreased to some 55,000 today, after the occupation forces turned most of the grazing lands into military zones, in addition to demolitions which have escalated in this year.’”
“’At Hadidiyah, just as in all Bedouin villages, we are located in area ‘c’ under the Oslo accords, which means that we are forbidden from adding any new structures, building a school, fixing a road or having a clinic,’ pointed out Bisharat.”
“’Demolitions and settlement expansion in the Jordan Valley increasingly create a reality where the Jordan Valley is effectively annexed by Israel, without Israel having to announce its annexation,’ Tafakji added.”
“’The land beyond the road is forbidden’: Israeli settler shepherds displace Palestinians” The Guardian, 2022
“About 450,000 Israelis have settled in what is now Area C of the West Bank since the occupation of the Palestinian territories began in 1967, some motivated by religious or nationalistic reasons, and others by the cheaper cost of living…What was once seen as a pioneer lifestyle is now often very comfortable: some early settlements are now well established and wealthy, with security guards at the entrance and fences topped with cameras and barbed wire. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are on hand to enforce military law for Palestinians, and civilian law for settlers.”
“In the Shadow of the Mountains: The Jordan Valley and Israel/Palestine’s Marginalized East” Jadaliyya, 2020
“As in the rest of the country, fertile agricultural lands were handed out to the favorite children of the Zionist establishment, “labor settlers” organized in kibbutzim (communal settlements) and moshavim (cooperative ones) who had previously worked land purchased from Arab landowners. The division of the region’s Jewish population between a Mizrahi (Middle Eastern-origin) urban proletariat and an Ashkenazi (European-origin) agrarian bourgeoisie would eventually take on political coloring, as the former rallied to the opposition Likud party against the Labor establishment.”
“The Israelis who followed the Allon Plan to found agricultural settlements in the ‘Araba, the Jordan Valley and the Golan in the 1960s and 1970s were united by a desire to renew the austere self-reliance of early Labor Zionist pioneers on a new frontier. Though their lands lie within Israel proper, occupied Palestinian and occupied Syrian territory respectively, and in quite disparate ecological zones, to this day these settlers maintain close social and kinship ties and a common political outlook.”
“Settling Area C: The Jordan Valley Exposed” – Al-Haq, 2018
"According to the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), there are 29 Israeli wells located in the Jordan Valley. 'Mekorot,' the Israeli water company, of which the State of Israel owns 50 per cent, regularly extracts copious amounts of water in order to supply flourishing agricultural enterprises run by settlers in the Jordan Valley. The water is intended for the irrigation of high-intensity and specialized agricultural products, mainly for export. 'Mekorot' significantly reduces Palestinian supply--sometimes by as much as 50 per cent--during the summer months in order to meet consumption needs in Israel and settlements in the OPT."