Lower thirds:

0:01 Report by / Fanny Facsar
0:53 Yazeed Ismael / Farmer 
1:38 Nasser Aljaghou / Beit Dajan village council
2:33 Fanny Facsar / DW Senior International Correspondent | Beit Dajan, West Bank
4:02 Naser Jaghoub / Advisor to the Minister of Agriculture

Script:

Tomatoes of various sizes fill this greenhouse — ready for harvest. In the past couple of years, cultivation boomed, but now farmers face serious challenges. 

SOT Yazeed Ismael, farmer (Arabic, young male)  
We come here to work, but settlers and soldiers arrive, inspect our IDs, and prevent us from doing our jobs.

Yazeed works in one of more than 200 greenhouses in Beit Dajan, a small village in the occupied West Bank. A lot of people depend on agriculture to make a living. 

But most recently an important water well has been destroyed. By radical settlers, Yazeed tells us.

SOT Yazeed Ismael, farmer (Arabic, young male) 
They put cement in the main water supply line, which brings water from the soil upward. See, it's all cement. It’s a feeling I cannot describe. All farmers here are affected. We have a lot of farmers who invested in the agriculture sector in Beit Dajan.

We are in the Jordan Valley region: a gem of natural beauty in the occupied West Bank. And its lowlands are among the most fertile areas in the territory. 

Villages like Beit Dajan have benefited from this rich soil. Many people here moved back to the village for work after Israeli authorities revoked their permits to work in Israel post October 7th. 

The head of the village council here has been supporting greenhouse projects, but further expansion is on hold as access to land is becoming limited. 

SOT Nasser Aljaghou, head of Village Council Beit Dajan (older male, Arabic)
The workers were fired in Israel, they had no source of income, so they shifted to agriculture. Our goal was to expand agriculture. We paid the price. The price is the colonial Zionist occupation which is being backed by settlers. They have begun harassing us. 

The village is near an area that the Israeli authorities have declared "state land."
In 2024, Israel confiscated more than 20 square kilometers of the Jordan Valley — the largest land seizure in the West Bank in decades.  Israel has earmarked this land for new settlements — although the international community considers settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law.
 
Fanny Facsar, DW Senior International Correspondent in Beit Dajan 
While construction doesn't start straight away, these official Israeli policies seem to embolden settlers. And they often intimidate and sabotage Palestinian farmers nearby. That comes on top of chronic problems: getting tomatoes produced here like this one to large markets is often very difficult. Reaching Ramallah, for example, can take so long that the produce risks rotting along the way.

Restrictions on movement have significantly increased since October 7th. This checkpoint here near Ramallah, is just one of several, this truck from Beit Dajan must cross until the tomatoes finally arrive at their destination.
 
For many vendors across the West Bank, all these delays often lead to less income. 

SOT Abu Yousef (male, Arabic) 
In the past, from Nablus to here, we needed about an hour, now we need more than three hours. At the same time, our income has decreased by half.

Shops depend on the steady flow of vegetables from the Jordan Valley to survive. 

SOT Abu Yousef (male, Arabic) 
It means everything. It is our income. It’s our life. We have nothing else. 

During the past decades, more than half of the Jordan Valley has been seized through Israeli settlement expansion, Naser Jaghoub explains. 

He has been seeking compensation from a Palestinian fund for people affected in the agricultural sector. The matter, however, extends beyond business: it’s political. 

SOT Naser Jaghoub, Advisor to the Minister of Agriculture (PA) (English, male)
This is systematic because they want to build a big Israeli state, without Palestinians, only for Jewish people, only for Israeli people.

Israel continues to confiscate land in the Jordan Valley and other parts of the occupied West Bank. As we drive through the region, we see countless billboards like these advertising new settlement housing. The United States says it won’t accept Israeli annexation of the West Bank — de facto, Palestinians say, it’s taking place bit by bit every day.