MakeNoise for Beita, Beit Dajan and Khirbet Humsa

Palestinian steadfastness and Israel’s hilltop strategy to isolate and annex the Jordan Valley.

All across their homeland, Palestinians wake up every day to wrestle with Israeli apparatuses of violence and apartheid to stop their imminent ethnic cleansing.

This report investigates Israel’s hilltop strategy aimed at isolating and annexing the Jordan Valley and sounds the alarm about the urgency to defend the struggle of Palestinians to protect their rights against Israel’s efforts to consolidate its control until the Jordan River.

We focus on three areas – Beita and Beit Dajan in Nablus district and Khirbet Humsa in the Jordan Valley – to show how local policies of colonization and expulsion are interconnected within the grand scheme of Israeli apartheid.

All of the areas we are dealing with in this report are in the so-called Area C.

The 1993 Oslo Accords have divided the West Bank in Areas A, B and C. Area C constitutes 61% of the West Bank. Area C is richly endowed with natural resources and it is contiguous, whereas Areas A and B are smaller territorial islands. Sovereignty over this area is essential for any Palestinian state.

According to the Oslo Accords, by 1997 Israel should have withdrawn its military, settlers and control from the area.

However, Israel continued without interruption to implement its policies aimed at colonizing and annexing Area C, which started in 1967. It attempts to squeeze Palestinians living in Area C in under-developed Bantustans that are demarcated by a matrix of apartheid and control: Jewish-only settlements, the Apartheid Wall, military bases, military checkpoints and by-pass roads for the use of Jewish settlers exclusively.

We highlight three crucial elements of the Palestinian struggle against Israel’s apartheid project:

1. The effectiveness of Palestinian relentless resistance, steadfastness and creativity despite the brutality of Israeli repression
2. Israel’s continuous attempts to take over strategic locations to advance its policies of annexation and colonization.
3. The ongoing necessity to ethnically cleanse ever more Palestinians in order to maintain apartheid and colonial expansionism.