RAMALLAH: Forty-seven Palestinian families in Jordan Valley, northern West Bank, are at risk of being forced from their homes after Israeli forces and settlers cut their remaining water supplies, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has warned.
More than 300 Palestinians, about half of them children, are affected in the communities of Ras Al-Ahmar, Ath-Tha’la and East Atouf, where the last pipelines supplying residents were severed over the past week, according to B’Tselem.
The rights group said that Israeli authorities also routinely prevented water from being transported into the area, leaving families heavily dependent on farming and livestock without reliable access to water.
B’Tselem warned that the disruption of water infrastructure was creating conditions that could ultimately force the remaining Palestinian families to leave.
The water cutoffs come amid the construction of a roughly 22-km Israeli barrier through the northern Jordan Valley that B’Tselem said had damaged farmland, crops and water infrastructure since work began in March.
Israel calls the project the “Crimson Thread” barrier, which is planned to extend from Ein Shibli to the Tayasir military checkpoint. Israel says that the project is intended to prevent weapons smuggling from Jordan.
According to B’Tselem, construction has uprooted olive trees, destroyed crops and greenhouses and damaged kilometers of water and irrigation pipelines, while potentially isolating Palestinian-owned agricultural and grazing land.
In July, Israeli forces uprooted more than 300 olive and grape trees and damaged pipelines serving about 45,000 dunams of agricultural land in the Atouf and Al-Baqi’a areas, the organization said.
B’Tselem also reported increasing attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities along the planned route, including damage to water pipes, road blockages and restrictions on access to grazing land. Residents have also been threatened with expulsion, it said.
The latest warning comes amid accelerating displacement of Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities across the occupied West Bank, with the Jordan Valley emerging as one of the areas most severely affected.
UN figures show that settler attacks and related access restrictions have displaced more than 2,300 Palestinians across the West Bank since the beginning of 2026. More than half of displacement attributed to those pressures this year has occurred in the Jordan Valley.
Water infrastructure has increasingly been affected. OCHA reported in July that humanitarian organizations were trucking water to vulnerable herding communities in the northern Jordan Valley, while recurrent settler violence, demolitions and restrictions on access to water sources had exacerbated shortages.
B’Tselem said that, as of June 30, 64 Palestinian communities across the West Bank had been forcibly displaced by Israeli military actions and settler violence since October 2023, affecting more than 4,300 people.
Among them were families from Ras Ein Al-Auja in the Jordan Valley, where prolonged settler violence and pressure culminated in large-scale displacement earlier this year.
OCHA separately documented the displacement of about 600 Palestinians from the Ras Ein Al-Auja Bedouin community in January, describing it as the largest single-community displacement linked to settler attacks and access restrictions in the West Bank since the UN began systematically recording such cases in 2023.
The UN has warned that settler violence, settlement expansion and demolitions are driving Palestinians from their homes and undermining access to livelihoods and essential services across the West Bank.
