Dozens of settlers moved into eight homes on the border of Jericho on Wednesday after secretly coordinating their purchase with the Binyamin Regional Council, the Nachala Movement Israel and the council reported.
The homes are located in the village of Ein Diouk al-Tahta, several meters from the Palestinian Authority-controlled city, which lies in Area A of the West Bank. They are technically in Area C, however, which is under Israeli military and civil control.
According to Peace Now, an advocacy group that promotes a two-state solution, about 30 settlers arrived at noon on Wednesday to take control of the homes. There were unverified reports of violence, it said.
The new outpost poses security challenges for Palestinian residents of the city, who have allegedly already been targeted by settlers in nearby outposts, Peace Now said.
On Thursday morning, settlers attacked Palestinians in Deir al-Dik al-Tahta, west of Jericho, wounding three people after spraying them with pepper spray and beating them, the PA’s WAFA news agency reported.
Peace Now said: “Establishing a settlement inside Jericho poses a security threat and constitutes a geopolitical disaster that must not be allowed to happen. This move is designed to deepen friction and violence, entrench an apartheid regime, and foreclose any possibility of a future political agreement. A settlement in Jericho will create additional flashpoints and trigger further violence while dragging the military into unnecessary and life-threatening missions whose sole purpose is to protect a handful of messianic extremists bent on dragging Israel into the abyss.
“A caretaker government that has not received a mandate from the public has no authority to impose such far-reaching political and security realities on the ground. The IDF must, therefore, evacuate the new settlement in Jericho immediately.”
Palestinian National Council chairman Rouhi Fattouh condemned what he described as Israeli citizens’ “seizure” of the eight properties, claiming the move amounted to terrorism and would push the region and the world “toward more conflicts and violence by encouraging colonialism, confiscating land, and imposing displacement in blatant defiance of international law and signed agreements.”
Palestinian law labels selling land to Jews as act of treason
Nachala rejected the characterization of the purchases as a seizure, maintaining that it had legally purchased the properties.
Palestinian law treats the sale or lease of land to Israeli Jews as an act of treason, which can carry the death penalty.
In 2019, a Nablus court sentenced a Palestinian man to five years in prison for attempting to sell land to Israeli Jews. In 2018, a Kalkilya court sentenced two Palestinian men to 15 years of hard labor for their involvement in a network seeking to transfer West Bank land to Israeli Jews.
Daniella Weiss, a co-founder of Nachala, said: “These homes in Jericho mark the end of the Oslo Accords that caused so many casualties. We are now… opening a new era.”
National Missions Minister Orit Strock said: “Settlement in Jericho is the continuation of the process of repairing the damage caused by Oslo. Jericho is the lock of the Land of Israel. This is where the cursed Oslo Accords began, and now, we have reached this root and are making it bloom again.
“The next step is returning to Gaza. On the eve of Shabbat Chayei Sarah, we can say that our forefather Abraham is very proud of his successors: those redeeming the land of Israel by paying its full price and settling it.”
Jericho was the first city handed over to the PA in May 1994 following the signing of the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.
Binyamin Regional Council head and Yesha Council chairman Israel Ganz said: “Thirty-two years after ‘Gaza and Jericho first,’ we proudly say: We have returned to Jericho! Thank you to Daniella Weiss and the Nachala Movement for their determination and partnership, which turned the dream into reality, and to Minister Orit Strock, who came to strengthen the families on the very day they moved in. We will continue to build and settle the Land of Israel.”
Combatants for Peace claims IDF escorted settlers into homes
A representative from Combatants for Peace, an NGO that promotes peace between Israelis and Palestinians, told The Jerusalem Post the development was “particularly disturbing,” adding that the IDF had escorted the settlers into the homes.
“This is especially jarring during the harvest season, when the Israeli authorities, led by the army and the Civil Administration, do everything in their power to prevent about 100,000 Palestinian families who depend on the olive crop from reaching their lands and harvesting their olives,” the NGO’s representative said. “The establishment of the outpost in Ein Diuk Thahta is another license for the terrorism of the settlers in the area, who in July-August repeatedly attacked the residents of the area and their property and even destroyed Palestinian homes.
“This is another step by a government that deepens the occupation and its injustices, supports settler terrorism, fuels the fire in the region, and expands more and more settlements that are changing the face of the region in an attempt to thwart any possibility of a future peaceful political solution.”
The IDF said entry into the homes had taken place without prior coordination with the military and “without permission.”
“The acquisition process and the security implications derived from it are now being clarified by the relevant parties,” it told the Post.