[News] ‘Destroying agriculture is the purpose’: How Israel is drying up the West Bank’s most fertile farmlands

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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‘Destroying agriculture is the purpose’: How Israel is drying up the West
Bank’s most fertile farmlands
Qassam Muaddi
August 17, 2026
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[image: image.png]

Israeli military vehicles on Palestinian agricultural land in the Jordan
valley, near the West Bank town of Tubas, May 6, 2015. (Photo: Shadi
Hatem/APA Images)

Agriculture in the northern West Bank could be on the verge of disappearing
under the weight of Israeli land confiscation and the destruction of water
wells. The Atouf area, in the Tubas governorate in the northeastern West
Bank, and long known as the region’s “breadbasket,” has been targeted by
settler attacks on its water lines. The settler raids complement the
Israeli army’s ongoing infrastructure projects in the area, which have
plowed through Palestinian farmlands and demolished wells.

For four months, thousands of Palestinian farmers in the Atouf plain have
been unable to access water for their crops after settlers began attacking
and damaging water lines, according to local residents. In recent weeks,
the Israeli army has bulldozed farmland in Atouf as part of a military road
project, further damaging water lines in the process. The army has also
issued demolition orders for wells on the plain and has already demolished
several.

The northern West Bank has been at the center of Israeli military orders
and settler activity in recent months after the Israeli government allowed
settlers to return to sites where four Israeli settlements had been
evacuated in 2005. In a first since the Second Intifada, the Israeli army
took over a neighborhood in the city of Jenin for military purposes inside
Area A, which is the part of the West Bank that is supposedly under the
exclusive jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Tubas has also seen its share of Israeli raids and settlement expansion,
particularly given its strategic location overlooking the northern Jordan
Valley. But the destruction of water sources on Tubas’s farmland carries
deeper implications for Palestinian life in the area and across the West
Bank, reaching beyond the issue of Palestinian geographic continuity and
land ownership.

The plain of Atouf is shared between the villages of Atouf and Ras
al-Ahmar, both extensions of Tammoun, the administrative center of eastern
Tubas. Together, Tammoun, Atouf, and Ras al-Ahmar hold more than 85,000
dunams (8,500 hectares) of farmland, parts of which the Israeli government
has confiscated over the years of occupation. As of early this year, some
30,000 dunams of land in Tammoun and its eastern villages were still being
farmed by Palestinians, with hundreds of families depending on agriculture
in the region.

Sameer Bisharat, former mayor of Tubas, told *Mondoweiss* that “70 to 80
percent of people in Tammoun and its surroundings depend partially or
entirely on farming for their living, especially after Israel revoked
working permits.”

“Israeli settlers from the surrounding outposts have been coming and
damaging the water lines, emboldened by the fact that the Israeli army had
begun building a military road across the plain last year,” Bisharat
explained.

Palestinians in Tammoun tried several times to fix the damaged lines, but
the Israeli army kept ordering workers to leave the area, Bisharat said.
Then, over the past two weeks, the Israeli army began distributing
demolition orders for water wells that farmers depend on for irrigation.
Last week, it began demolishing several wells in the Atouf plain.
‘There is no tomorrow for me’

Durgham Muhammad, a full-time farmer in Atouf, owns 400 dunams (40
hectares) of farmland in the Atouf plain, including greenhouses, fields
growing several crops, and a water well.

“I produce seasonal crops like wheat, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers,
potatoes, lettuce, spinach, and various fruits,” he told *Mondoweiss*.
“Like most farmers here, I sell them to vendors in the vegetable markets of
Nablus, Beita, and Qabatia. I hire 30 farmers to help me, and their
families depend on this land for their income.”

Muhammad used to irrigate his farm from his own well, with enough left over
to sell to other farmers in the plain. But last week, he received a
demolition order for the well.

“For the past four months, our work has practically stopped, and we are
barely figuring out how to survive financially,” Muhammad noted. Although
it has yet to be demolished, he cannot make use of the water well.

“What we are trying to do currently is get as much water as we can from the
pipes to irrigate some of the crops and save as much of our produce as
possible,” he said. “The most difficult part is that even this is
temporary, because the military road is going to make all 400 of my dunams
inaccessible, which means I will lose my only source of income, and I have
no other profession.”

“When I think about it, I realize there is no tomorrow for me, and I can do
nothing about it,” he added. “It drives me to the brink of madness.”

For Khalil Tafakji, a Palestinian geographer and expert on Israeli
settlements, the Israeli takeover of the Atouf plain and eastern Tubas is
unique because it doesn’t correspond to any previous settlement expansion
plans.

“I studied the military road project, which also includes a military fence,
based on the maps,” he told *Mondoweiss*. “It crosses the northern West
Bank from east of Tammoun and Tubas, through east of Qabatiya and Jenin,
and ends at the northernmost point of the Green Line in the West Bank,
several kilometers west of the Allon Road, which has long marked Israel’s
plan to annex the Jordan Valley.”

What this means, Tafakji says, is that the project “doesn’t serve any
current settlement expansion purpose,” and is “ purely military.” Unlike
other cases, he added, “the destruction of water sources and agriculture in
the area doesn’t have an obvious Israeli objective.”

“I can’t help but believe that in this case, at least, the destruction of
the agricultural economy in the West Bank is itself the Israeli purpose,”
Tafakji explained.

Israel has confiscated at least 52,000 dunams (approximately 5,200
hectares) of land in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023,
according to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission.
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*Qassam Muaddi*Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for *Mondoweiss*.
Follow him on Twitter/X at @QassaMMuaddi <https://twitter.com/QassaMMuaddi>.
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