Far-right settlers divert West Bank spring water as Israel backs heritage site takeovers

PETZAEL, West Bank (AP) — The natural springs and ancient pools of the occupied West Bank have long provided a respite from the oppressive summer heat. They also have been a lifeline for Palestinian communities, which rely on them for tourism and irrigation for their farmland.

But for the 2.8 million Palestinians who live in the territory, those springs and the stone reservoirs they fill are increasingly out of reach as Israeli settlers — encouraged by a hard-line government facing reelection — have stepped up efforts both to seize the springs and other heritage sites.

In one case this summer, water from a natural spring to the Palestinian village of Fasayil was illegally diverted to an ancient pool nearby. Whoever siphoned the water used it to fill up that pool, declaring it a new tourist attraction named after Herod, the Roman-appointed king of Judea.

Agreements reached in the 1990s indicate the pool is located in Area C, meaning it is under full Israeli military control. Research by Dror Etkes, who runs the settlement watchdog group Kerem Navot, determined the land was privately owned.

Palestinian farmer Saad Nemer, from Fasayil, said the water being cut off has devastated his fields, adding that his family has documents that prove ownership of the land. COGAT, Israel’s military body that oversees civil issues in the West Bank, acknowledged the water was diverted “without authorization” and said it would investigate.

Other swimming areas in the West Bank have also become sites of conflict. An Israeli father of six was shot and killed last week by a Palestinian at a spring in the northern West Bank, where he was bathing with his oldest son ahead of the Yom Kippur holiday.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since it captured the territory, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 war. Since then, it has built a network of settlements for more than half a million Israelis on land Palestinians seek for a future independent state.

The international community overwhelmingly considers the settlements illegal. Earlier this month, during a rise in settler violence and other actions that have displaced Palestinians, the British government accused Israel of turning “a blind eye” to what it described as “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank — perpetrated by settler terrorists.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned the violence but blamed it on a “handful of rioters” in the occupied West Bank he said do injustice to the “law-abiding settler public.”

The push to take over and claim heritage sites is part of this wider effort, according to Israeli rights group B'Tselem, which said in a report this month that such designations are used to “elevate the historical, cultural, and religious ties of the State of Israel and the Jewish people to the West Bank.”

The decision by settlers to name the pool near Fasayil after Herod was an attempt to “brand” the site as part of Jewish history, said Alon Arad, executive director of Emek Shaveh, an Israeli group that opposes the politicization of archaeology in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Archaeologists have never studied the site, so it's unclear when it was built. Other ruins in the area date to Herod's reign in the first century B.C.E., according to excavations conducted by the archaeology unit of Israel’s Civil Administration, a branch of the military that manages day-to-day affairs in the West Bank.

At the beginning of October, after the Jewish holidays, the pool will be drained so that the administration’s archaeologists can complete a full survey of the site, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said in an interview with The Associated Press.

He praised the group that originally diverted the water and said about $1 million has been earmarked by the government to rehabilitate the site. That is out of at least $166 million he said is now allocated for excavations and infrastructure at more than 100 sites he claimed are connected to Jewish heritage in the West Bank.

“We’ll turn this place into the Garden of Eden,” Eliyahu said during a visit to the pool, which is near the Petzael settlement.

There is “no such thing as a Palestinian nation” he added, before leaping into the water.

The struggle for water access in this strip of fertile land reflects a wider contest for control of the West Bank, and in particular the Jordan Valley, which Palestinians consider the breadbasket of their hoped-for future state and Israelis view as key to protecting their eastern border.

Palestinians have faced water shortages and restrictions since Israel took control in 1967. Interim peace accords in the 1990s recognized their water rights but preserved a system that allocated some 80% of water pumped from the main aquifer for Israeli use.

Now, soaring attacks by settlers are exacerbating the problem. Settlers have damaged, destroyed or seized approximately 160 water and sanitation structures, including pipelines and cisterns, in Palestinian communities in 2026, according to a July report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The attackers are increasingly targeting shared water infrastructure and have disrupted supply to all or large parts of several Palestinian communities, the report said.

In Al Auja, in the Jordan Valley, the seizure by settlers of the local natural springs has forced some Palestinian farmers to abandon their fields.

Murad al-Juba, 53, once grew an abundance of fruit and vegetables, including cantaloupes, eggplant, bananas and tomatoes. But after settlers encroached, harassing residents and diverting the spring water, he said he has been unable to plant.

“All these farms depend on the spring, but today, the spring is gone, because the settlers took it,” Juba said.

More recently, “settlers have completely taken over” the spring's waterfall and turned “the area into a quasi-military zone,” said mayor Hani al-Njoum, adding it has been devastating for local tourism and agriculture.

“This land was bountiful,” Juba said. “Today, it is a desert.”

Bwaitel reported from Al Auja, West Bank.