High Court petition demands protection for West Bank Palestinian herding communities

The High Court of Justice ordered the IDF, the Civil Administration department of the Defense Ministry, the police, and other agencies this week to respond to a petition by seven Palestinian shepherding communities from the northern Jordan Valley demanding protection from settler violence and access to vital services.

The seven villages filed their petition last week after coming under increasing pressure in recent months and years from radical settlers and the IDF, which they say has made life in the region almost impossible and argue that it amounts to “ethnic cleansing.”

The High Court ordered the respondents on Tuesday to file their response by August 6.

According to the Jordan Valley Activists organization and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which filed the petition, the villages are the last Palestinian shepherding communities in Area C of the Jordan Valley, after settler harassment and state pressure forced other communities to abandon their dwellings.

The petitioners are 17 members of the communities, which include al-Hama; al-Farisiyah; Ein al-Hilweh; Samra; al-Hadidiyah; Khirbet Humsa; and Khallet Makhul, along with ACRI itself, which says the villages in question are in immediate danger of being uprooted.

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“What is happening in the northern Jordan Valley is not a series of isolated and accidental events, but a consistent, premeditated policy. This is called ethnic cleansing,” said Reut Shaer, who filed the petition to the High Court.

ACRI details in its petition eleven herding communities in the northern Jordan Valley in Area C of the West Bank, where Israel has full civilian and security control, that have been depopulated during the course of 2025 and 2026.

It says that the seven petitioning communities have existed for decades and must therefore be protected from displacement, even if they do not have zoning or construction permits themselves.

According to B’tselem, some 4,200 Palestinians from 62 communities in Areas C and B of the West Bank have been forcibly displaced in the wake of the wars following the Hamas October 7, 2023 massacres — a result of settler violence and state harassment. Another 15 communities have been partially uprooted.

Some 16 illegal settlement outposts have been established in the last decade in the northern Jordan Valley, three of which were set up in the last six months, ACRI stated, which have increased pressure on the Palestinian communities. This does not include wildcat encampments established to harass specific dwellings, which are taken down after they succeed in displacing those communities.

The current government has greatly increased financial and other forms of support for illegal outposts, including purchasing security equipment for them, subsidizing volunteer workers, and subsidizing the purchase of livestock.
Allegations have also been made, including by senior IDF officers, that the IDF helps coordinate the establishment of illegal outposts with local settlement municipal authorities, claims that the head of IDF Central Command appeared to confirm recently.

Cabinet ministers such as far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have declared that the establishment of illegal outposts is designed to seize control of land in the West Bank to the detriment of local Palestinians, while settler municipal council leaders have openly acknowledged that they help coordinate the establishment of such outposts.

The petition therefore accuses the state of actively participating in the activities behind the harassment of the Palestinian communities, including enabling the establishment of violent outposts and wildcat encampments, failing to deal with incidents of extremist violence against the communities and their villages, and denying them access to pasture land and water resources.

As such, the petition demands that the state demolish illegal outposts, take down fences denying the Palestinian communities access to grazing land, and enable the communities access to water infrastructure and other key services.

The ACRI petition asserts that the IDF, Civil Administration, and police are obligated to protect the Palestinian communities under both Israeli law and court rulings requiring the state to uphold the law in the West Bank, and under international law, which requires that an occupying power protect the inhabitants of the territory.