Abstract
The mineral and stone quarry-rich Jordan Valley is also the agricultural heartland of
Israel/Palestine. It is located in Area C, which constitutes over sixty percent of the West Bank.
Settlers control roughly ninety percent of this valley and have used classic tactics of settler
colonialism to try to absorb the land without the people. The academic literature on settlers and
settlements often focuses on the drive for Israeli land expansion as purely ideological or
religious, but this fails to acknowledge the prevalence and dangers of business and economic
settlements that impact Palestinians residing there, as well as the environment.
In the Jordan Valley, business/economic settlers will collaborate with the Israeli military
in harassing, harming, and exploiting Palestinian labor while also driving them out of the region.
This paper looks at the history of Palestinian life in the Jordan Valley since 1967 before
exploring the ways that the creation of Area C by Oslo sets up a horrific situation. These
dynamics are contradictory in character. Israel extracts resources from the environment, limits
access to basic necessities for Palestinians, and explores how settlers use violence as a tool to
push people from the land. The paper’s argument is that Israel’s occupation necessitates the
imposition of two legal systems over separate groups in the same place. Israel extracts natural
resources, which is dependent on Palestinian labor, to illegally profit from the occupation while
trying to eliminate them from living there.
The aim of this paper is twofold; first, to provide a historical analysis of the region in
order to understand the present day conflict since 1967 and especially after the Oslo Accords.
Then, to illustrate the ways in which Israel uses exploitation of natural resources, labor, legal
manipulation, and settlement construction and expansion in order to annex the Jordan Valley.
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