Ziyad Mashhour al-Ghafari stood in the courtyard of his house in the Palestinian village of Sinjil in the occupied West Bank, looking at the olive grove that his father had planted decades ago and which has now been destroyed.

Eight months ago, Ghafari was informed that Israeli authorities planned to build a section of the wall that would separate his village, Sinjil, north of Ramallah, from the main road. No details were given to him regarding the design of the wall, its layout or its proximity to his house, which is closest to the road.

In late September, Ghafari, like other villagers, was surprised by a large number of Israeli forces, accompanied by military bulldozers, at the main entrance to the village. They then uprooted the olive trees and bulldozed the area around his house. Every time he tried to approach them to ask what was happening, he was threatened at gunpoint and ordered to go home.

“Suddenly our lives turned into a nightmare. The house is no longer safe; there is no more privacy, no more freedom of movement, and we do not know when or how this nightmare will end,” Ghafari told Middle East Eye.

Ghafari, 62, returned from the United States years ago after a 40-year absence to rebuild his life in his hometown.

He renovated and restored his family home and began tending the olive trees around the house.

“My whole childhood before my emigration was spent here. My grandfather planted these olive trees in front of me and I played under them with my neighbors’ children when I was a child. But these bulldozers destroyed them all in a few hours , before my eyes,” he said.

Citing stone-throwing by local youths, the Israeli civil administration informed village residents several months ago of its intention to confiscate 30 dunums of village land to build a 1,000-meter separation fence. long “to protect the safety of settlers passing Route 60.” “.

Route 60 is the main road connecting the northern, central and southern West Bank.

At that time, Ghafari and all the villagers tried to object to the decision, but their objections were rejected on the grounds that it was a military order that could not be challenged. Three months ago, Israeli authorities issued a second decision to add an additional 500-meter section to the wall.

The villagers, who do not know more details about the Israeli plan for their village, live in real fear of isolating it from its environment.

According to their estimates, based on the work of the bulldozers, nine houses are on the path of the wall. In addition, another 49 houses will be cut off from the village and 8,000 dunams of agricultural land located in the northeastern area of ​​the village will be isolated and taken over, to be annexed to four other existing settlements in the region.

“The settlers have been trying to take control of this area for years and the residents have managed to push them back,” Moez Twafsha, the mayor of Sinjil, told MEE. “But now they are exploiting the war and using flimsy excuses, like preventing stone throwing.”

Since the start of the war on Gaza a year ago, landowners have been denied access to their land and Israeli forces have closed the main road to the village. Anyone who tries to approach is attacked.

According to Twafsha, this decision affects not only the village but also freedom of movement on Route 60.

Wholesale separation

Looking at the pattern of other similar decisions, Israel aims, by building buffer zones around several villages like Sinjil in the West Bank, to completely separate these communities from their Palestinian surroundings and prevent their connection with the wider region.

“Suddenly our lives turned into a nightmare. The house is no longer safe; there is no privacy, no freedom of movement’

– Ziyad al-Ghafari, villager

According to the Commission for Settlement and Resistance to the Wall, a Palestinian government body, Israel issued 13 military orders after October 7, 2023 to establish buffer zones for the construction of sections of the wall or fences around settlements in strategic areas of West Bank.

These areas are spread across different sites. In the Ramallah governorate: Al-Mazra’a al-Gharbiya around the Harash outpost and Deir Dibwan around the Mitzpe Dani settlement.

In the Salfit governorate: Yasuf around the settlement of Kfar Tapuach, Iskaka around the settlement of Neve Nehemia, the towns of Qarawat Bani Hassan and Haris around the settlement of Karnei Shomron and Deir Istiya around the settlement of Revava.

In the governorate of Nablus: Burqa around the settlement of Homesh. A second zone near Awarta and Rujeib around the settlement of Itamar, and a third zone in As-Sawiya and Yatma around the settlement of Rehalim. In addition to a fourth area in the villages of Burin, Madama and Asira al-Qibliya around the settlement of Yitzhar.

In Qalqilya: near Kafr Qaddum, a buffer zone is planned around the settlement of Kedumim.

In Bethlehem: villages of Nahalin and Al-Jaba’a around the colony of Gvaot.

Around Jerusalem: in the village of Jaba, a buffer zone is planned around the settlement of Geva Binyamin.

Although the details of Sinjil’s wall plans are unclear, some villages have yet to receive an official decision regarding construction, despite orders issued months ago, such as Burqa, in north of Nablus.

The return of the settlers

The wall will isolate areas near the Homesh settlement, to which settlers returned after being evacuated following the Israeli disengagement plan, under which Israel evacuated settlements in Gaza and some in the West Bank in 2005.

Years later, in 2013, the villagers received a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court granting them the right to reclaim approximately 1,200 dunums of their agricultural land that the occupying forces had seized in 1978 to build the settlement.

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Villagers began rehabilitating their land and preparing to build on it, only to find themselves facing a new battle against settlement expansion.

However, the major blow came in March 2023, when the Israeli government approved a bill to “repeal the disengagement law” in the West Bank, allowing settlers to return to four dismantled settlements, including Homesh.

Since then, Homesh settlers have repeatedly attacked the villagers and their agricultural lands.

Ziyad Abu Omar, head of the Burqa village council, said the problem extends beyond previously confiscated land, as settlers are now expanding into more than 500 new dunams of village land.

“We have not yet received a decision to confiscate land for the construction of the wall, but we see Israeli bulldozers working daily in the area, clearing land and erecting more fences around the recently installed caravans,” he said. -he declared to MEE.

Annexation and separation plans

These enclaves, despite the danger they pose to isolated Palestinian communities in the West Bank, are only part of a larger plan that will make the West Bank a grim reality, according to Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Palestinian Popular Campaign Against the apartheid wall.

These decisions are part of the West Bank annexation plan, which is being rapidly implemented by exploiting the war conditions in Gaza.

“What is happening on the ground is that these military orders to confiscate land here and there are misleading. While the military order may speak of confiscating 10 dunums of a Palestinian village, in practice it isolates and confiscates thousands of dunams around him.” Juma said.

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“These lands are ultimately annexed to existing settlements, expanding them or creating connections between them.”

In the case of the village of Sinjil, the decision mentions 1,500 meters of wall and the confiscation of 30 dunams to build it. However, in reality, this wall will isolate 8,000 dunams and annex them to the settlement of Ma’ale Levona, connecting it to the settlements of Shilo and Eli and new outposts, creating a massive settlement bloc in the region. This could potentially lead to the complete closure of the road to Palestinians and its control by settlers.

All these measures, along with other plans to build more settlements and expand smaller ones, are tipping the scales in the West Bank, turning Palestinian communities into a minority confined to isolated enclaves, the keys to which lie between the hands of the Israeli occupation. .

In 1995, the Oslo Accords divided the West Bank into three zones. Areas A and B are under the civilian administration of the Palestinian Authority, while Area C, which includes approximately 60 percent of the West Bank, remains under full Israeli military and civilian control.

“Now we are talking about a complete separation system that involves not only the annexation of zone C but also zones classified A and B, completely encircling these villages and controlling the movements of their inhabitants,” Juma said .