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Ras al-Ahmar, occupying the West Bank – The drive to Thaer Bisharat’s house should take less than 10 minutes from the main road. Instead, it took three hours.
Every gate leading to Ras al-Ahmar, north Jordan Valleyit is closed today. Such road closures have become the norm rather than the exception, administered alternately by Israeli soldiers and regulars whose roles on the ground have been difficult to distinguish. The only road left was a single dirt road, winding, four-wheel-drive only and requiring drivers to navigate Israel.
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On the way to Thaer’s home, Israeli soldiers sealed off the site in a larger-than-usual manner near the al-Buqaia valley, destroying three Palestinian wells – including one belonging to Thaer’s family.
These are some of the most fertile areas in the West Bank where farmers often grow rows of bananas along with crops such as grapes, olives and potatoes. But along the dirt road leading to Thaer’s remote home, the fields are half-abandoned, with green plastic doors open and blowing in the wind, as the crops grow thirsty after water was cut off in the area weeks ago by Israeli authorities.
“I can’t even do another job,” Thaer said. “From the village of Tamun, it used to take me ten minutes. Now, with the recent (dirt) road… it takes an hour, even if it’s good.”
During the day he lived alone – his brother and sister-in-law had gone to town that morning to earn a living. Left alone, it was easy to feel like a sitting duck.
“This morning, there was a car – two people in it, wearing military gear, being supported by soldiers,” he said. “They went to the people living near the banana houses, and downloaded ID pictures, names, phone numbers, and told them, ‘You have 24 hours to leave.
In recent weeks, this pressure has increased from the long-standing orders of “military closures” issued by the military to seize private land, including the destruction of irrigation pipes, water wells and green spaces that are in the way of the blockade – a very sharp statement taking the direction of the expansion of the blockade and the confiscation of land that is still working now.
“They lock us in and weaken us,” Thaer said.
Canals, foreign reserves and a list of expropriation laws
This isolation is the reason for one of Israel’s most recent projects in the populated West Bank: the ‘Crimson Thread’ barrier. Announced in 2025, the first phase of the project includes a tunnel and a military road that runs about 22km between the Ein Shibli and Tayasir settlements – cutting off the northern Jordan Valley from Tubas in the north and Nablus in the south. Israel says it wants to prevent arms smuggling from Jordan, but the route runs several kilometers inside the populated West Bank rather than across Jordan’s already fenced border.
The plan is for the barrier to run 500km, dividing the Palestinian population from thousands of hectares and creating a barrier that – in its effect – shows a dividing wall on the other side of the West Bank.
On March 8, Israeli army chief Gilad Shriki visited several Palestinian territories, and, in his speech, warned the residents to leave in preparation for the occupation of the entire territory of Israel.
Then, last month, a ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court paved the way for the ‘Crimson Thread’ barrier to continue. Since then, the Israeli Civil Administration has moved strongly. About three kilometers of canals have already been dug, destroying Palestinian ruins in its path – including irrigation pipes, fields and green spaces, while displacing farmers from the land on the other side.
The approach of the ‘Crimson Thread’ project was linked together with nine land confiscation laws – “a clear escalation” of the many years that the Israeli authorities have done to remove the Palestinian population from the area, according to Dror Etkes, who follows the Israeli land policy at the Israeli NGO Kerem Navot. What started out as checkpoints, settlements and the designation of Palestinian areas as military firing zones “in recent years have become more violent – due to terrorist attacks, armed attacks, confiscation of property and refusal to enter the firing zones”.
Now, such military confiscation laws allow Israeli authorities to “seize any territory they want” to protect it, Etkes says.
According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, Israeli authorities issued 49 orders to occupy military sites in the first half of this year – more than the 47 issued in all of 2025.
Thaer despises formal reasons. “It’s not a war road,” he said. “You don’t dig two and a half trenches, three meters deep like that.”
‘Jail to Jail’
Etkes said that the barrier achieves two things at the same time: “blocking the ability of Palestinians to enter anything east of the barrier” – where most of their farms are located – and connecting the illegal settlements with the new areas that are being built along the road, in Jabal Tamun, that they hope to touch again 8-9,000 dunams (8 to 9sq km in the most agricultural area of the Palestinian Area).
“Many areas are no longer there – they were forced to leave, which convinced (Israeli officials) that it was time to move,” Etkes said, citing areas in need such as Khirbet Samra and Khirbet Yarza.
Kerem Navot’s map shows the ‘Crimson Thread’ barrier surrounding Khirbet Yarza – but by the time of construction, Khirbet Yarza was already gone, its inhabitants displaced months before.
Mahdi Daraghmeh, who heads the al-Maleh village council, saw the same thing happening in all the villages he oversees. “The fear and fear of Settlers has caused many families to leave,” he said. “In these areas, 130 families have fled their homes – they have left their homes, their houses, their land. And now they have lost their wealth – they have nothing left.”
Following the Supreme Court’s June ruling, Israeli authorities have been operating almost every day in the area, cutting off water, destroying tanks and confiscating tractors and other agricultural equipment.
“They have taken away our tractors and water tanks here,” said Thaer. So they say these tractors and tanks are threatening their security.
At the same time, the settlers brought the people of the eastern area of Ras al-Ahmar, and placed themselves in the places expected to be removed from the Palestinian territories.
On June 16, bulldozers demolished the home of Bilal Bani Oudeh, a friend of Thaer, and warned him to leave within 24 hours. He refused, so that night, the colonists returned and brutally attacked him.
“He almost died,” Thaer said. “After they attacked him, they discussed tying him to the back of a car, and they took everything he had.”
While the authorities are trying not to write or photograph the ‘Crimson Thread’ project, excavations have uprooted hundreds of olive and grape trees while cutting irrigation pipes that supply thousands of dunams. On the morning of July 14 alone, Israeli authorities destroyed three wells in al-Buqaia – including one belonging to Bisharat’s family – and confiscated pumps and equipment.
The Atuf village council – one of the victims of the new barrier – spent more than 4 million shekels ($1.3m) in one day.
Already, this attack has destroyed the local economy in a matter of weeks, wiping out the summer harvest. “There is no agricultural season to speak of,” Daraghmeh said. “A lot of land is not cultivated and what has been cultivated is for the benefit of the people of the country.”
Once the canal is completed, separating the villages from their fields, people fear that the Palestinian presence here will end. “Our communities will have no jobs, no infrastructure,” said Daraghmeh. “There’s no hospital, no emergency room, no schools; for all of that, people have to go to the next town and that’s not possible.”
He said: “As soon as this canal cuts people off, the people here will be in prison.”
‘Give us animal rights’
Since Israeli authorities shut off water to the area for several weeks, one tank now costs Thaer more than 300 shekels ($100), triple the previous price. But even carrying water is a dangerous job; recently his brother was beaten and robbed of his gun by robbers who lived in their house, who allegedly stole his phone and money.
Mr Thaer says farming in the area has fallen by 90 percent, while many families have lost half of their livestock due to the inability to access pastures.
But among the neighborhoods now erased, Thaer has seen the playbook before: after the Palestinians are removed, he says, the settlers will take over their land. “Then all of a sudden there’s no ‘shooting point,'” Thaer said. “The road is visible, the water has arrived, the sheep have arrived, life has returned to the place, thank God!
“Then why am I being told that everything is military?”
Thaer looked at the Israeli farms, lush and green in the distance. Around his own place, the ground was dry, littered with half-abandoned weapons. “Under their ‘law’, they treat us like animals,” he said.
Thaer paused. “Israel always talks about ‘freedom’, ‘freedom’, ‘freedom’,” he said. “When someone beats a dog, all of a sudden, there are animal rights activists everywhere.”
“So basically, we don’t even want human rights,” he said. Just give us the animal rights they talk about so much.
