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The occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank is already walled off on its west side from Israel. The separation barrier is more than 400 miles long, as high as 25 feet in parts. Now, Israel's military says they are going to build a new stretch of border wall on the east side of the territory. NPR's Emily Feng went to see where the new wall will go up and found this story.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Palestinian farmer Mohammad Sawafta looks at his wasted fields.
MOHAMMAD SAWAFTA: You see it. It's dried. It's called - it's overmature.
FENG: He's pointing to the husks of faded red peppers that he wasn't able to harvest this year, so they rotted on the vine. We're moving fast because we're passing an outpost built by hardline Jewish settlers.
SAWAFTA: They forbidden me to reaching the area in last June.
FENG: Most days, the settlers watch him from just a few hundred meters away.
SAWAFTA: They start to attacking us to putting their hands on more and more and more area.
FENG: And they threaten his workers when they try to plant or harvest, making it nearly impossible to come to his own fields. And so an entire year of crops went bad.
SAWAFTA: Nearly about 30 years, I am establishing this farm. I am losing it in one moment, just one moment, and in spite I have the ownership document of these lands.
FENG: Israel's own military says incidents of severe settler violence - including shooting, arson and other crimes - rose 50% in the last year. Illegal settlements have been proliferating for decades, but they have accelerated recently with the express purpose of driving out Palestinians.
SAWAFTA: So we are in the middle here.
FENG: Sawafta is pointing to a concrete separation wall in the distance. Israel started building it more than 20 years ago, much of it inside what's called the Green Line, an armistice line from the 1967 war. The line is within sight of Sawafta's farm.
SAWAFTA: Now all of it that's inside the wall and outside the wall, the same thing.
FENG: The wall is mostly built on Palestinian land. It cuts off the entire west side of the West Bank from Israel.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOOR CLOSING)
FENG: And according to new Israeli military plans, another line of blockades and checkpoints is now being built on the West Bank's east side along the fertile Jordan Valley, where I drive through - part of something called the Great Rift.
ELIE AVIDOR: Goes all the way from Syria to Victoria Lake, I think, in Africa.
FENG: This is Elie Avidor. He's part of a group called the Jordan Valley Activists, tracking and trying to stop the spread of illegal settler outposts and tracking the construction of what activists fear is a new separation wall. Israeli military documents describe the planned 22-kilometer-long barrier as a way to stop a surge in drugs and arms smuggling from neighboring Jordan. But Israel's already built a fence along its border with Jordan, so Avidor does not buy this reason.
AVIDOR: Now they are building way in and very close to the Palestinian villages the new fence.
FENG: Israel has already served eviction notices to some Palestinian families along the barrier's planned route, so activists like Avidor know it's going to slice a Palestinian village in half and encircle another one completely, called Khirbet Yarza. And that's where we head next.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DRIVING)
FENG: Thirteen Palestinian families live here in Khirbet Yarza...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...Shepherding sheep as their families have for generations here. And they tell NPR when we arrive that the planned border wall will trap them.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: This man says the planned wall will cut them off from all municipal services from the nearby town. His young children would have to cross a new checkpoint just to go to their school or to the doctor. He and the other shepherds in this story did not want to give their names because they fear retribution from the Israeli military and Jewish settlers who live nearby.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "What do you see here? It's a trap," another man says. "We will be trapped inside the wall," he says, cutting him off from pasturelands for his sheep. But right now he has bigger problems.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: "Every day," he says, "the settlers come and harass us." And suddenly, he cuts our interview short.
AVIDOR: Call the police.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: The settlers are coming.
FENG: Oh.
AVIDOR: The settlers are coming.
FENG: Because there are two settlers driving up to the village, and they are angry that we're there.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE ENGINE)
AVIDOR: They cover their hands. They cover their...
FENG: So he's covered his face.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: The settler is now kicking and punching the people that I'm with. The Palestinian shepherds later show me pictures they took of the same settlers shouting from just days earlier. They say this particular settler comes often on his horse to intimidate them. Eventually, the settlers calm down, but Avidor with the Jordan Valley Activists worries we are trapped now.
AVIDOR: The only question is how we do go back.
FENG: But eventually, we do find a route to drive out on, and we leave the Palestinian family behind to face the night and whatever comes in the next days on their own. Emily Feng, NPR News, Khirbet Yarza, the West Bank.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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