of Area B in the arid desert hills between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea near the Israeli settlement of Tkoāa all evidence of Bedouin who once lived there appears to have been erased, while in a second area those that remain are being harassed by settler violence.
In a landscape of deep wadis and dusty limestone escarpments, Bedouin shepherds until recently grazed flocks on the low-lying plants that appear in the winter months, or on seasonally cultivated forage crops in the flat valley bottoms.
Valleys that once sustained groups of Bedouin up to a few hundred are now occupied by ramshackle illegal outposts, sometimes a single house or hut, sometimes a couple of buildings, visible radiating out from Tkoāa through the hills and connected to the main settlement by snaking water pipes.
People have always expanded this way, before the birth of the nation-state (which has positives and negatives, to be sure).
The difference is, people would usually marry each other, and the stronger culture would win out over time.
Cisterns used by the Bedouin for generations are now under settler control, while new settler cultivation, largely of olive trees fed by the water pipes, is replacing grazing for sheep.
According to Yoni Mizrachi, a researcher for the settlement monitoring group Peace Now, much of the emptying of this area near Tkoāa took place in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, an event that supercharged settler activity on the West Bank.
With it has gone a unique culture in the hills, which until only a handful of years ago seemed inseparable from the landscape.
āYou can see how empty it is except for a few outposts,ā Mizrachi said, adding that while these illegal outposts framed their activity as āfarmingā these shacks in reality represented an effort to take control of large rural areas that had succeeded even in the absence of the Israeli military.
āIn 2024 I counted 59 new illegal outposts,ā said Mizrachi, referring to all of the West Bank. āIt was a record year. A new one every week. Before, you might see between zero and 10 to a dozen in an average year.ā
It is an effort that has been supported by the building of new illegal roads which, in the area east of Tkoāa, have been bulldozed into the hills. āThe Bedouin here are the weakest and most vulnerable of the Palestinian communities and they are being displaced as communities and made homeless,ā Mizrachi said.
This total annexation thing is going to be a bigger project than Trump thinks.
Weāre getting some serious Iraq war vibes.
Remember the Iraq war, guys?
This is going to suffocate any attempts at trying to start a war with the Chinese.