Israel established 41 herding posts in West Bank under Trump - B'Tselem

“You can see that in the last four years, this trend has become the main trend of land grab in the West Bank,” Kerem Navot founder and researcher Dror Etkes told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “Most of the herding outposts have been established in the last four years during the Trump administration period,” he said.

In a report on settlement activity slated to be published Tuesday, the NGOs explained this new phenomenon where settlers placed a few illegal modular structures at key points in Area C with a focus on using the larger area around it for herding or farming.

It was part of a larger push in the past decade to illegally expand Israel’s hold in Area C of the West Bank, the NGOs said in the report on Israel’s overall settlement policy titled, “This is Ours – And This, Too.”

Map from the report on Israel’s overall settlement policy titled, “This is Ours – And This, Too.” (Credit B'Tselem and Kerem Navot)Map from the report on Israel’s overall settlement policy titled, “This is Ours – And This, Too.” (Credit B'Tselem and Kerem Navot)

At a Zoom event, Etkes spoke of 65 illegal settler outposts that had been built in the past decade under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure, of which 24 were designed to initiate new communities and 41 erected in the last four years that were agriculture and herding endeavors.

This has allowed the settlers to take over thousands of dunams very quickly, he said.

Each herding outpost could involve five to seven dunams on land that was either private Palestinian property or state land, Etkes later told the Post. These outposts have created friction with the Palestinians, he said, adding that violent attacks against Palestinians were carried out from these herding outposts.

“Some of these farms and the routes leading to them lie within areas declared as firing zones, mostly along the Alon Road,” the report said.

“Many of the settlers in these outposts violently prevent Palestinian shepherds and farmers from grazing their flocks, cultivating their land or moving around in them,” it said.

In the aftermath of the failed annexation campaign, settler leaders and right-wing politicians have focused heavily on the issue of unauthorized outposts.

At issue initially were some 100 unauthorized outposts built between 1991 and 2005. In many cases, the illegal fledgling communities were funded by government ministries.