Description

Photos: Published by Haaretz

1.Graphic.

2.An aerial map of some West Bank farm outposts and the swaths of land they have taken over. "We're talking about 35 expulsions [of villages] in two years," says Dror Etkes, of the Kerem Navot NGO, "with the majority being 'October expulsions.'"

3.Prime Minister Netanyahu and, right, Zeev Hever at the Nativ Avot outpost in 2019. The longtime settler leader has free access to the premier's office. Credit: Mark Israel Salem

4. Magnezi Farm. Two-hundred sheep, endless pasture land and groves of banana and mango trees. Credit: David Bachar

5.Young settlers heading for a Palestinian hamlet near the Zohar Sabah Farm in the Jordan Valley. "These guys – 15, 16, 17 years old – are the spearhead of the State of Israel, and they are the ones who are winning the battle," says Uri Cohen, of Havat Nof Gilad. Credit: Avishay Mohar/Activestills

6.A settler near the Palestinian village of Tuba, in the Southern Hebron Hills, wears an Artzenu T-shirt with a JNF logo. Credit: Ali Awad

7.A young settler-shepherd with his flock in the Jordan Valley, last month. "In the past the farmers themselves would go to confront the Palestinians and the activists. Now these youngsters are on the front line," says activist Yifat Mehl. Credit: Mistaclim – Looking the Occupation in the Eye

8.The Nof Gilad farm in the Jordan Valley. "The taxes go to the Welfare Ministry, the Welfare Ministry subsidizes the teens," the farm's owner told an activist who confronted him. "Why are you asking me?" Credit: Hadas Parush

9.Binyamin Achimeir, 14. Murdered by Palestinian in April, 2024.

10.Destruction in the village of Duma, in the wake of the murder of Binyamin Achimeir in April. Four Palestinians were killed in the settler riots in the area. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

11.A settler near the village of Surif, in 2021. Some 20 masked settlers attacked Palestinians harvesting olives there that year. Credit: Shai Kendler/Megafon News

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Settlers call it a revolution: More than 60 illegal farm outposts have sprung up in the West Bank during the past seven years, seizing vast tracts of Palestinian land. With cheap labor provided by 'at-risk' youths, this enterprise has also become a main fomenter of Jewish terror in the territories – and the state is generously footing the bill

Hagar ShezafHilo Glazer
Oct 11, 2024 12:00 am IDT

The road to Havat Dorot Illit – Upper Dorot Farm – actually starts with a steep descent. The sharp turn in the internal road of the settlement of Ma'aleh Shomron leads to a virgin trail in a nature reserve, which poses a challenge for even skilled drivers. The trail was carved out solely for the farm. For long minutes it looks like a road to nowhere.

Atop the hill is the home of the farm's owners: Ben Yishai Eshed, along with his wife Leah and their two small children. One family and a herd of cattle, stuck like a bone in the throat of the veteran Palestinian communities living in the area. At some distance from the family's home a concrete hut dominates the terrain. This is the makeshift headquarters of the soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces regional defense unit who are guarding the settler outpost. However, the heart of the farm pulsates from within a modest structure that's off to the side: a large tent covered with black canvas. The mattresses that lie inside in a heap indicate that this is where the boys of Dorot Illit live.


In a promotional video on the web, Eshed boasts that on the farm with them are no fewer than six youths "who are volunteers and are learning how to work, appreciate and love the land."

During our visit we came across two youngsters who said they were 17 and 16, though they looked younger. One told us that he had grown up in a remote town in northern Israel, dropped out of school a year ago and ended up on the farm via an acquaintance of his parents. Since settling in the isolated outpost he has undertaken a demanding routine of waking up at 5 A.M. and taking the cows to pasture. Over time he has also become adept at harvesting olives and doing maintenance work. After telling us his story, he speeds off with his buddy on an all-terrain vehicle.

Just then Eshed himself arrives from the main road. He's puzzled for a moment by the unexpected guests who have come to hike in the nature reserve and found themselves on his farm, but immediately gives us a friendly look. "Did the kids offer you coffee?" he asks, adding that he means "the guys." Who are the guys? "Kids of 15 or 16 who didn't find themselves in school," he explains.

Eshed parts from us cordially but firmly. We start to head back on the winding path. On the way we catch a glimpse of a storage container that bears the inscription, "Uri Eretz Ahavati" (Awake, My Beloved Land) – the name of the nonprofit for at-risk youths that is behind the farm's experimental educational project. According to its reports to the Registrar of Associations, Uri Eretz operates "an educational framework for youths who have difficulty integrating into formal frameworks, which involves establishment of agricultural farms that serve as a form of boarding school for youths, where they are taught to love the land and to work the soil."

Dorot Illit constitutes the first part of the project. In 2023, the nonprofit that operates the farm received almost 400,000 shekels (about $110,000) from the Negev and Galilee Development Ministry; Eshed also receives a token salary from the organization. In addition, the Agriculture Ministry approved a grant of almost 100,000 shekels over a two-year period. That's not all. Until the end of 2023, the farm was also supported as part of a program for at-risk youth initiated by the Jewish National Fund.

This past July, settlers from the farm and its environs arrived at a nearby Palestinian village. According to the local inhabitants, the interlopers attacked them with iron pipes, clubs and stones, and torched their tents; a 3-year-old boy who was asleep in one of them was injured. Altogether five village residents were hospitalized. Eshed himself was documented at the scene. A complaint filed by one of the villagers was dismissed by the police, who claimed it was unable to locate the suspects.

Palestinians say this assault was the worst in a series of abusive acts perpetrated by the people from the farm. Indeed, they view their life in terms of before and after the establishment of the outpost.

The bottom line is that Havat Dorot Illit – one of the most extreme and unruly places in the West Bank, which has became a focal point of friction and violence almost from its very inception – enjoys a hefty slice of public funding. And it's not the only one.

Settlers in the West Bank are talking about what has been going on in recent years in farming and shepherding outposts, almost all of which are illegal, as no less than a revolution. Its spirit embodies the "miracle" National Missions Minister Orit Strock described in the context of the events triggered by the October 7 massacre. Indeed, in the shadow of the year-long war, the government has tightened its grip over the West Bank. The main course in this whole meal are relatively small groups of gluttonous people from farms who are seizing control of large tracts of land.

The pioneers in this realm have been around for quite a while. The first communities they established, in the 1980s and 1990s, were Har Sinai Farm in the South Hebron Hills, Avri Ran's Ranch in Givot Itamar and Skali Farm east of the settlement of Elon Moreh. By early 2017, there were 23 such outposts scattered across the West Bank. But since then there has been a dramatic surge in their number, with some 65 new ones established within just seven years. In 2021, Amira Hass reported in Haaretz on four farms that had been established within five years and controlled an area the size of the city of Holon.

Now there are around 90 such outposts that together cover approximately 650,000 dunams (162,500 acres) of land, or about 12 percent of the territory of the entire West Bank – an area that equals that of Dimona, Jerusalem, Be'er Sheva, Arad and Eilat combined.

The thriving enterprise of pastoral and agricultural outposts, which differ from the kind of outposts typically associated with so-called hilltop youth, was initiated and founded in a well-planned way. One only need listen to Zeev ("Zambish") Hever, the longtime settler leader who has free access to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office. Hever, the brains behind the land grab in the territories and head of Amana, the main operational arm of the movement to create settler outposts, shed light on the project in June. In an interview with the magazine Nadlan Yosh (Judea-Samaria Real Estate), Hever referred to "safeguarding open territory" as Amana's key mission and added that "the main means we use is agricultural farms." He also noted that "the area occupied by these farms is 2.5 times the size of the area occupied by all the hundreds of settlements."

Amana is definitely a powerful organization, with assets estimated to be worth 600 million shekels (currently about $158 million). Even so, by itself it could not have breathed life into such an ambitious undertaking. In recent years, the state has made outpost farms a flagship endeavor and heaped extraordinary largesse on them. Tens of millions of shekels in public funds are being injected into these communities directly by government ministries, the local authorities in the territories and the World Zionist Organization's Settlement Division. Concurrently, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has announced that he is working to have the farms formally legalized.

In contrast to the past, the owners of the new farms tend to play ball with the state – diverging from the "classic" ideology of the hilltop youth, who totally rejected cooperation in the past with what they saw as the establishment. The result is that outpost farmers are now working shoulder to shoulder with the state, which is granting loans for establishing their communities, allocating contracts for pasture land, hooking them up to infrastructure, underwriting their security needs, purchasing equipment for them and also offering "pasturing grants" and even "business entrepreneurship grants."

Haaretz's investigation reveals that at least six government ministries are involved in financing and maintaining this whole burgeoning enterprise, whose underlying purpose is the forceful takeover of land and systematic dispossession of Palestinian residents.

The generous basket of support is only one element of this whole initiative. The Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael) has also become a significant supporter of it, its main contribution revolving around projects for at-risk youth on the farms and ranches.

In general, the term "at-risk youth" has in recent years become the linchpin for an entire industry of "laundering" the farms, particularly in terms of their image. The teenagers' residence there under the aegis of an "educational" or "rehabilitative" framework accords the outposts valuable legitimization, which in turn is converted into fat budgets. Some of the programs are even included in the enrichment activities' packages the Education Ministry offers educational institutions.

In the meantime, however, there is mounting evidence to the effect that in many cases the farming and shepherding outposts have become a breeding ground for extreme nationalist violence. Examples from recent years are rife: the Zohar Sabah Farm, in the Jordan Valley, from which settlers, some of them minors, set out to attack the principal of a Palestinian school on the grounds of the institution; the Hamachoch Farm, near Ramallah, whose inhabitants succeeded in driving off residents of the neighboring Palestinian village, Wadi al-Siq; Yinon Levy from Meitarim Farm, in the South Hebron Hills, who led assaults and harassment that forced residents of another village to flee. On these farms, the vanguard force is often comprised of at-risk teenagers themselves.

Since the war broke out a year ago, an ostensible passion for revenge among settlers on the farms has grown, along with their boldness. The Shin Ben handed the government a document recently in which it warned about the speedy proliferation of farms and the rise in the violent incidents that have emerged from them. "Let's call a spade a spade," says Hagit Ofran, who heads the Settlement Watch project in Peace Now. "The steep rise in settler violence across the West Bank is directly related to the emergence of the farm outposts. Their inhabitants are responsible for much of this violence." At the same time, there has been a sharp rise in the number of Palestinian communities in proximity to the farms whose residents have been forcibly driven out of their homes.

"We're talking about a scale of 35 expulsions [of villages] in the past two years, with the absolute majority of them being 'October expulsions,'" notes Dror Etkes, founder of Kerem Navot, an NGO that monitors the settlements in the West Bank.

The international arena has not been indifferent to these developments. In the past year, the United States, Britain and other countries have imposed sanctions on the owners of six such farms. Explaining the reasons for the measures imposed on three farms last March, the Biden Administration stated that they had "engaged in repeated violence and attempts to engage in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank," and in some cases against other Israelis as well.

But the young volunteers living in these communities are not affected by the international condemnation. "Since the war [started] we're pretty much allowed to do everything, from the security standpoint and also when it comes to authorization," says a youth who lives on Havat Oppenheimer – abutting the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) settlement of Immanuel, in the northern West Bank – with alarming honesty. "The army is with us and it'll be easier for us to take over land. Also in terms of the United States, because since October 7 their eye has been more on Gaza and less on Judea and Samaria [in the West Bank]." Indeed, since the war broke out, reservists have been deployed in the farm outposts on a permanent basis, bolstering the hold over land wielded by Havat Oppenheimer, aka Havat Se'orim (Barley Farm), and by similar outposts.

Barley Farm, which was established in mid-2023 by the head of the land department in the Samaria Regional Council, lies not far from Dorot Illit. "There are three farms along the same axis," the youth says, adding, "It's divided in an absolutely strategic way.

The jewel in the crown here is the "war room" – a part of the main building that's full of split screens that receive feed from cameras scattered in the area, which enables observation of the whole sector 24/7. A control room planted in the heart of a verdant nature reserve. The farm's owner even has a drone equipped with a night-vision mechanism, thanks to the generosity of the One Israel Fund, an American organization that supplies the farming outposts with a range of technological security-related devices.

Nili, located a few kilometers east of the Green Line, is a symbol of secular, bourgeois settlement. Its homes with their red tile roofs are embraced by a hermetically sealed fence. On the street leading into the settlement, an installation consisting of empty chairs silently calls for a deal to save the hostages in Gaza. From the observation point at the top of the hill, two Palestinian villages are visible nearby, reminding one of the basic purpose behind the founding of such communities. And yet today, the contribution of veteran settlements like this to the aim of driving a wedge between Arab communities in the West Bank looks almost marginal.

No binoculars are necessary for viewing new developments in the area. At the foot of Nili lies Magnezi Farm, named for its founder, Yosef Chaim Magnezi, who lives there with his wife Devora and their toddler son. "The contrast between Nili and Magnezi constitutes the essence of the whole story here," activist Etkes avers. Magnezi covers about 5,000 dunams (1,250 acres) of farmland – the size of the city of Yehud-Monosson in central Israel, and four times the size of Nili – even though its entire population consists of a single family living in a truck-turned-residence, along with a few occasional guests.

Magnezi Farm has extended long tentacles into Palestinian-owned land around it by means of new dirt paths. Promotional materials written about the farm state that its purpose is "preventing an Arab takeover of territories in our precious land." Magnezi, for his part, stated in an interview, "There are going to be Jews in these hills. There are those who understand more quickly and those [who understand] more slowly."

The outpost, with its flock of 200 sheep, endless pasture land and groves of banana and mango trees, could not exist without an efficient network of volunteers. Most are teenagers, some of whom have dropped out of various frameworks and others who are not in contact with their families. According to the website of Hashomer Yosh (Guardian of Judea-Samaria), a government-backed organization that helps provide volunteers for the farms – which has just recently become the object of U.S. sanctions – "many young people come to Magnezi… among them Haredi youth from [the settlement of] Kiryat Sefer."

Magnezi and his wife delegate numerous tasks to the members of their young workforce – some of whom are classified as at-risk – including maintenance of infrastructure and shepherding work. The ostensible therapeutic-rehabilitative wrapping provided by the farm is based on manual labor in a place where people "live simply and make do with little, [and which is] connected to nature," Magnezi told the Channel 7 News website last year. "The young people, to their credit, have this fire in their eyes. They're the ones who need to do these crazy things. The youths want to establish a farm and be active. They must be permitted to do so."

Magnezi's ostensibly educational enterprise has thus become a magnet for problematic young people. One of these is Einan Tanjil, from Kiryat Ekron, a town near Rehovot, who arrived in the West Bank hills as an adolescent. Last February, he became one of the first people on whom the U.S. administration imposed sanctions. In November 2021, when he was 19, Tanjil and around 20 masked settlers attacked Palestinians who were harvesting olives in the groves of Surif, a village near the settlement of Bat Ayin. He also clubbed three Israeli human rights activists and was convicted of aggravated assault using a cold (nonexplosive) weapon and of attempted assault.

During the court proceedings, Tanjil requested to be held in custody on the Magnezi Farm. Yosef Chaim Magnezi appeared at the hearing and described at length how he had assisted young people like Tanjil. "I have been occupied a great deal with these young people, I really believe in these people," he stated. "They are very strong people and I feel that they need to be given a direction in life." Devora, his wife, also mentioned their role in rehabilitating young people like Tanjil. "This is part of my mission," she said, "to accept folks that have no place to be."

For its part, however, the Probation Service wasn't impressed by the couple's words – nor was the judge. The state's representative reminded the court that Magnezi himself had been investigated on suspicion of making threats and of trespassing in an incident that took place in a nearby Palestinian village. She added that his farm was a focal point of "disturbances and friction."

On a visit to the farm by Haaretz two weeks ago, one of the volunteers, an 18-year-old from a Haredi community, was spotted doing maintenance work. He related that he had arrived at Magnezi two years earlier, after dropping out of a yeshiva and getting involved in criminal activities. "I was in jail for youthful nonsense," he said. "I am the person I am today thanks only to the farm." And he added, very simply, "This is a settlement farm. Before this, Arabs used to come here."

Now the place is booming, the young man said, pointing to an isolated orange structure about a kilometer away by foot – a "daughter farm" where other volunteers like him are now living. "We started here and we are advancing to there." Life at "the new site," he said, has been complicated by constant friction with the Palestinians in the area.

The determined move to expand is no small matter: Not long ago, the farm reported that it was in economic straits and launched a crowdfunding campaign under the slogan "Saving Magnezi's Farm." The public responded by donating around half a million shekels. The nonprofit that acted as the pipeline for the donations is right-wing activist Shai Glick's Btsalmo organization. By the way, that same organization was also the platform on which funds were raised for another "needy" person – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – to pay for his legal defense.

Besides the Hashomer Yosh organization, the Regavim nonprofit, which also helps support Magnezi Farm, receives generous government funding yearly. The Agriculture Ministry has provided a modest grant to the farm and other support for its operations comes from none other than the JNF.

The JNF's activity in the West Bank has sparked furious disagreement within the organization. Some of its local representatives are center-left in their political orientation and others are North American Jews – groups that don't typically approve of the settlement enterprise. When members of Jewish communities around the world donate generously to the JNF, they may not realize that their money is actually underwriting activities benefiting extremist settler outposts, some of them violent, throughout the West Bank.

Nevertheless, during the past three years the JNF has transferred 5.5 million shekels to its farm youth program, which helps volunteers on agricultural and shepherding outposts and is branded as a scheme for assisting at-risk youth. As part of this program, teenage volunteers participate in vocational training, different sorts of workshops and matriculation courses – paid for by the JNF. The vocational training includes options for developing particularly useful skills for settler outposts, such as welding, installation of security cameras, agricultural work and proficiency in Arabic. Such activities risk not only failure to bring about the eventual departure of the young people from the farms – they may help ensure that they will remain there.

A document obtained by Haaretz reveals the list of mostly illegal outposts supported within the framework of the JNF farm program, some of which have been sanctioned by Washington because of their violent character. Some officials in JNF are concerned that its continued funding of the program might be a violation of those sanctions.

Havat Hamachoch and Havat Rimonim are both such outposts. Both farms, as well as the person who runs them, Neria Ben Pazi, have been subjected to U.S. sanctions for their role in expelling local Palestinian communities. Another farm involved in the same JNF program that's also on the U.S. blacklist is that of Zvi Bar Yosef. About a year ago, Haaretz reported a slew of example of violent attacks that originated on Zvi's Farm, including some described as pogroms.

All told, until the end of 2023, more than 200 teenagers had taken part in the JNF project in dozens of West Bank farms. Eighty of the youths were among the beneficiaries of the 1.5 million shekels (about $415,000) the JNF transferred to the Binyamin Regional Council in the West Bank. The JNF transferred an even larger sum, 2 million shekels, to Artzenu, an organization that has funded training programs for 150 youths in 25 additional farms. Indeed, Artzenu is one of the organizations most closely identified with the many volunteers streaming into those outposts. Cooperation with it was frozen by the JNF following a Haaretz report about it last year.

In the view of left-wing activists, projects promoted as serving at-risk youth have always been an effective means for taking over land in the West Bank. As early as 2013 a therapeutic outpost called Haroeh Haivri (the Hebrew Shepherd) was established near Kfar Adumim, east of Jerusalem, to "rehabilitate" hilltop youth. The farm was built without a permit, but later the state legalized it. At present it operates in cooperation with the armed forces and receives a generous grant of 2 million shekels a year from the Education Ministry.

The Liel pre-military academy, named for Staff Sgt. Liel Gidoni, who was killed in Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and geared to at-risk youth, was established four years later after settlers took over an abandoned army camp in the Jordan Valley. The Education Ministry allots it about 170,000 shekels a year, on average.

Another relatively new farm outpost is Lechatchila Farm, created in 2019 in the Jericho area, for dropout Haredi youth. Since its creation, tensions have been constantly rising between it and neighboring Bedouin shepherding communities. This project, too, is part of the JNF's farm youth project and it has been funded it to the tune of about 1.25 million shekels in the past two years.

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In any event, the millions the JNF heaps on the activities of volunteers in the unauthorized outposts are only one cog in a multi-institutional, resource-heavy mechanism of governmental support. In seeking out yet another public body involved in underwriting such enterprises, we must go back to August 2022, when Naftali Bennett was prime minister of the "government of change."

At that time, Bennett, who also held the settlements portfolio in the government, approved the annual working program of the WZO's Settlement Division, which included "planning essential infrastructures and security components in Young Settlement [i.e., illegal outposts] with a horizon for regularization." Under the cover of this convoluted language, the division transferred 15 million shekels to farm outposts in 2023. This year, the budget was almost tripled – to 39 million shekels (over $10 million).

Yisrael Gantz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council, described the plan with palpable emotion at a meeting last year. "We have here an EB [exceptional budget] of great interest and importance, which is at our disposal for the first time in history," he said. "[The IDF] Central Command defined exactly what to put where, the Settlement Division transferred the funds and we need to execute [the plan]. This is the first time that Young Settlement is receiving a government budget on the table."

It emerges that the outposts in question are spending the 54 million shekels, over two years, to acquire utility task vehicles, drones, cameras, generators, electric gates, illumination poles, fences, solar panels and more. WZO's Settlement Division is not disclosing what types of "security components" were purchased for which outposts. However, Peace Now reports that devices used for security purposes have recently been installed in at least 30 farms, including five on which international sanctions have been imposed for violent acts against Palestinians.

At a gathering held by the Religious Zionism party in June, the director general of the Settlement Division, Hosha'aya Harari, spoke about the extensive public support being offered to the settler farms. He stated that 68 such communities had been funded in 2023. He also mentioned the 7.7 million shekels earmarked for "building new roads" within the outposts in general. These dirt roads are crucial arteries for the outposts, enabling the settlers to expand deep into the surrounding territory.

Besides seizing land, the farmers often act as self-appointed inspectors who deal with illegal Palestinian construction, by means of drones, threats and reports to the authorities. They have been joined by so-called land patrol departments set up by various councils, to which the Settlements Ministry has allocated tens of millions of shekels since 2021. Over the past two years, the patrol bodies have received an average of 35 million shekels per year, in order "to prevent planning and construction violations and the seizure of state lands" – even though it is the Civil Administration that has the authority to supervise Palestinian construction. The funding has been used to acquire all-terrain vehicles and to install cameras in open areas, for partial funding of salaries and "building roads and closing off areas."

Besides seizing land, the farmers often act as self-appointed inspectors who deal with illegal Palestinian construction, by means of drones, threats and reports to the authorities.

Perhaps it's only natural for the state to see the outpost farms as start-ups – as an innovative enterprise designed to take over maximum territory with minimum manpower – and, accordingly, to provide the settlers with "business entrepreneurship" grants. Thirteen "farmers" received such funding, a total of 1.6 million shekels, from 2020 to 2022. Among the recipients were entrepreneur Zvi Laks from Eretz Hatzvi Farm west of Ramallah, who was granted 140,000 shekels, and Issachar Mann, who runs an outpost in the South Hebron Hills and received 120,000 shekels.

These two farms are examples of outposts that are presented to the public as places of leisure and recreational activities, but whose real raison d'être is hidden. Eretz Hatzvi is described on its website as a "hospitality complex with an amazing ecological pool," which offers "country-style breakfasts." The Mann Farm promises vacationers "desert hospitality," of which the crowning glory is a "Bedouin tent" divided into three bedrooms. A night there will set you back 800 shekels ($212); its main attraction is a pair of wading pools that face the endless expanses of the Judean Desert.

Like the other illegal communities mentioned here, these two outposts also rely on a workforce manned by young volunteers (the Eretz Hatzvi site contains a photo gallery titled "Our Special Youth"); both are also part of the JNF's Farm Youth program. In July, the U.S. sanctioned the Mann Farm because of systematic violence perpetrated by its settlers.

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