At the end of 2016, yet another illegal outpost in the hills overlooking the Jordan Valley came into being, located in the Um Zuka nature reserve, not far from an army base and firing range. Nature reserves in the occupied territories, just as firing zones, are often a tactic to limit the movements of Palestinian herders, keeping them off their lands, while not preventing the establishment of Jewish settlements.

The young, mostly teenage hilltop youth would ride around on their horses like in the Wild West, tending a herd of cows, intimidating the Palestinians out of their grazing lands, sometimes physically attacking them, especially when the Palestinians were not accompanied by Ta’ayush and MachsomWatch activists.

This May, MachsomWatch activists discovered that the hilltop outpost was illegally receiving water from the adjacent army camp. With the public exposure of this fact, the pipe was cut off. In need of water for their cows, the settlers then took their herds down into the valley, near the large spring of Ein Sakut close to the Jordanian border, driving away the Palestinian herders from their own land and water sources.

Confronted by the settlers and the army,  Ta'ayush activists accompanying the herders, were able to supply proof, on the spot, of the High Court decision establishing Palestinian ownership of that land, including maps with exact GPS location - thanks to today's electronic communication. Still the skeptical representative of the Civil Administration, who was called in to arbitrate the conflict, claimed it was "not clear" there was such a decision by the High Court.

Apparently, this intervention did prompt the settlers to seek a new solution for their watering problems. In May 2017 the illegal outpost was moved to a new location, so that it can receive water from Hemdat, the closest settlement. This move still required running a water pipe for more than  5 km.

And now they have water aplenty…. so much so, that they can afford to let it run to waste, spilling uncontrolled out of the cows watering trough, while the Palestinians and their herds thirst for water in the scorching valley.

At another illegal outpost, above the settlement of Mechola  and its satellite, Givat Salit, water is so plentiful that the young settlers can allow themselves to water a lush lawn

while the Palestinians, in this once water-rich valley, are forced to truck in their water, at the exorbitant cost of 25 NIS a cubic meter - their wells and springs often blocked, clogged or confiscated by the Israeli settlement enterprise. 

As happens all too often, the  water containers of the Palestinians are also sabotaged. Not far from the Um Zuka outpost, during the month of Ramadan, the blue water barrels that the Palestinians bring to the hills so that they can water their sheep while herding, were viciously slashed, spilling all that precious water....