Cows as a Tool of Annexation

My recent visit to the Jordan Valley was not an ordinary field trip or a traditional solidarity tour but a direct confrontation with one of the most cunning and brutal forms of Israeli settlement: pastoral settlement. There, in the village of Furush Beit Dajan, east of Nablus, the settlement policy sheds all its masks, revealing itself in its simplest and most devastating forms: a cow driven by violence, an armed settler, and Palestinian land being seized before the world's eyes.

I arrived at the village accompanied by my friend Adli Hanaisha, on our way to visit a friend who received a grant from the "Together" Development Center to help him establish a small agricultural project.

A simple idea, but profound in its implications: an attempt to live, to endure, and to invest in the land instead of fleeing from it. However, the Jordan Valley does not allow simple stories to unfold easily.
As soon as we arrived, the scene changed. A group of armed settlers invaded the area and released herds of cows towards the farm. It was not random or unexpected; it was a deliberate and calculated act, executed with the confidence of someone who knows that the law is on their side, or at least does not stand against them. The cows trampled the crops, uprooting months of labor, while behind them, settlers shouted violently, preventing anyone from approaching, transforming the land into a battleground of forceful control.

In that moment, we did not meet our friend face to face, not because he withdrew or retreated, but because he was at the heart of the confrontation. He remained on his land, observing what was happening and trying to prevent the settlers from invading his farm, standing bare-chested before the herds of cows and armed settlers. His agricultural project, which was supposed to be a small story of hope in the Jordan Valley, transformed before our eyes into an arena of open aggression and a living example of how development can be thwarted under the hooves of cows and the barrels of rifles, when the land owners are left alone to face a complete system of violence.

Furush Beit Dajan is not an exception but a model. A Palestinian village located east of Nablus, surrounded by pastoral outposts that silently expand, imposing new realities without the need for a military decision or a formal announcement. Here, the land is not confiscated with bulldozers, but exhausted through grazing, and Palestinians are prevented from accessing it under the pretext of "security" or "pastures," while grazing itself becomes a tool of forced displacement.

Politically, what is happening in the Jordan Valley and the village of Furush Beit Dajan cannot be viewed as isolated assaults or extreme behavior from groups that are outside the law. What is happening is a comprehensive state policy, executed with "civil" tools whose apparent facade is grazing while its underlying intent is creeping annexation. Pastoral settlement outposts have become the most effective arm of the Israeli settlement project because they achieve what official decisions fail to do: controlling the land at the lowest political and legal cost and creating realities that are hard to reverse later, even if governments or international contexts change.

The most dangerous aspect of this policy is that it drains any discussion of development or "building resilience" of its real substance. What is the value of an agricultural grant, a productive project, or limited developmental intervention in the absence of political and legal protection for the farmer? How can we ask Palestinians to remain on their land while they are left alone to face an armed settler protected by the state? Here, development becomes a psychological and moral burden on the victim, and resilience turns into an individual heroism instead of a collective choice supported by a clear national strategy that redefines priorities, placing the Jordan Valley at the forefront of political confrontation, not on the margins of interest.

What I witnessed in the Jordan Valley is a vivid embodiment of a clear Israeli policy: using pastoral settlement as a cheap and effective means to swallow the land, empty it of its owners, and connect the settlements through vast areas gradually seized from Palestinians. The settler does not need to build a house today; it is enough to release his herd, and whatever the cows graze becomes tomorrow's "state land," and the day after tomorrow a permanent outpost.

The greatest danger in this scene is not just the scale of violence, but its everyday nature. Violence without media clamor, without official statements, yet it is ongoing, cumulative, and destructive. A farmer is prohibited from his land, a developmental project is paralyzed before it is born, a village is slowly suffocated, and the world contentedly watches.

In the Jordan Valley, I understood that the battle is not just over dunams of land but over the right to exist. When the farmer is besieged in his land, he is not only deprived of his livelihood but also of his future, his ability to plan, and his belief that resilience is possible. What I witnessed in Furush Beit Dajan confirms one truth: the Jordan Valley is targeted today as the last line of defense for the Palestinian geography, and those who do not see the cows attacking the land now may wake up soon to find that the map has changed… silently.