'The settlers had an outpost near the school. They would walk and drive through, armed.'

IN A SMALL Palestinian community in the Jordan Valley, an 18-month-old boy held up a phone and started to pretend to film Sharon Devereux, a solicitor from Dungarvan, and other volunteers there on a human rights monitoring mission.

At first they were all amused – he had been pulling stunts all day to make the new visitors laugh – but then his aunt explained that the child was mimicking the routine filming his parents did when Israeli settlers carried out a ‘walkthrough’ in the community.

“We thought it was really cute, and then his aunt explained that he’s used to seeing adults filming the settlers when they walk through their homes, because for many people, a smartphone is the best and only form of self defence they have,” Sharon explained.

These walkthroughs are a key part of how settlers make their presence known to communities that are for the most part in this area made up of farming families.

Sharon spent three months in the West Bank from mid-August to mid-November last year alongside a team of volunteers as part of the Eye witness stories from Palestine and Israel (EAPPI UK & Ireland) programme.

The point of the visit is to accompany people who want your assistance and to bear witness to human rights abuses should they occur, while providing records that help to inform bodies like the United Nations.

That would include abuse perpetuated from individuals in any community there, but in her time in the Jordan Valley, Devereux says she chiefly witnessed “disturbing” behaviour by settlers towards Palestinians.

The Jordan Valley

The Jordan Valley forms the border between Jordan, Israel and the West Bank.

The demarcation line between the West Bank and Israel is determined by the terms of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, but much of the land in the West Bank part of the region has been annexed by settlers.

The landscape in the valley contains a multitude of contrasts, arid desert land gives way to green, fertile pastures.

The first thing Devereux noticed was the sight and smell of the date trees.

“They are like big palms. I thought they were beautiful at first, and then I realised that most are from lands that once belonged to Palestinians, now controlled by settlers… they became a symbol of a two-tiered society,” she says.

A two-tiered society

Devereux said that the Jordan Valley is split into two worlds. Though it’s a fertile, bread basket area and there’s a lot of water, much of it is directed towards settlements, creating a kind of “water apartheid” where Palestinian communities are frequently deprived.

She and the other volunteers were in an ‘Area C’ region, which means that the designated security force is the Israeli police, rather than the Palestinian Authority.

She says that she witnessed frequent examples of settlers creating outposts in an effort to drive Palestinians from communities on areas of land they wanted to take over.

“There’s a community called Murrajat East that’s been displaced by settlers that started out with an outpost in July.

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This is a community that’s been under pressure from a settlement called Zohar’s farm, run by Zohar Sabah who has been sanctioned by Europe,” she explained.

Devereux met members of this community who were displaced from their original homes.

“It was just really, really shocking. They had about 15 families left, and the settlers had an outpost near the school in the community. They would walk and drive through, armed, to intimidate people – we were in other communities when these walk-throughs happened in the last few months. They come into people’s homes,” she said.

Palestinians coming under pressure

The Dungarvan woman said that she and other volunteers sat with people in another community in the valley, the Ras ‘Ein al-Auja group, who were at the time coming under pressure from settlers in an outpost.

“Since I’ve come back the settlers have actually restricted that community’s access to water, which happens a lot in the valley,” she said.

Devereux said that the nature of some of the intimidation is deeply disturbing in its mundanity as well as its violence.

In one incident, her group witnessed settlers going around the homes of Palestinians in the very early morning, simply taking notes.

Devereux also witnessed Israeli peace activists who work to give 24-hour protection to Palestinian communities who come under threat.

That woman grew up in a major settlement in the West Bank, and she told Devereux that she had never really thought about what life might be like for Palestinians who live beyond the settlements until she saw some people being held up at a check point one day.

“But she’d had a good life in the settlement. People move there because they want to be close to Jerusalem, and they see it as a cheaper suburbia. They drive on separate roads in and out of the city, they do not have to look much beyond that,” she said.

She said that since the October 7th attacks and the ensuing genocide in Gaza settler ideology has become more mainstream in its most extreme form in Israeli society; key political figures who were once on the fringes have now become mainstream parts of Netanyahu’s administration.

On the ground, this has emboldened settlers in their attacks.

Mohammed’s crops destroyed

In one incident she witnessed, a settler deliberately destroyed a Palestinian man’s crops.

“We were with a farmer who had an aubergine field and a settler came and drove through his field of aubergines, shouting at him and threatening him, and telling him he was going to come back when we were gone.

“That man phoned the police and we waited with him for a long time, they just never came even though they said they would, that happens often,” she said.

The impact on children

Devereux said that one of the most impactful things she witnessed was the toll that living in a community that comes under pressure from settlers has on children.

“Sometimes the children travel to school, and the teacher doesn’t show up because they can’t get through a checkpoint,” Devereux said.

“The families do a really amazing job of trying to give them normal childhoods. But it’s impossible in those circumstances of occupation, because it is totally pervasive to every aspect of their lives,” she added.

You can find out more about EAPPI’s work here.

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