Hanad Dameel unlocks the gate to his farmland in the Palestinian village of Beit ‘Anan, northwest of Jerusalem, where rows of cucumbers and olive trees are dropping in the summer heat. The garden’s dehydration is not the result of hot weather but rather neglect.

“Each time I visit, I need to plan ahead of time—how am I going to work in the land?” Dameel told Jerusalem Story.1 “I have almond trees, and the almonds have grown, and they need to be picked. Also, grapes and grape leaves that I won’t be able to pick. I need to bring in a tractor or a donkey or a horse so I can flip the soil, [but] I’m afraid to reach there and develop the land. So it’s been left behind, and it’s not usable for agricultural purposes anymore.”

Dameel’s neighbor Abu Jameel Muhammad also has a locked fence surrounding his land, which Israeli soldiers and settlers frequently invade, he says.

“When the settlers see movement of people [on my land], they come and say, ‘Why are you here?’” Muhammad told Jerusalem Story.2 “Anything we try to plant, the settlers take down, so we’re not planting. We’re not putting in trees at all.”

Muhammad and Dameel’s properties are surrounded by two outposts, Israeli settler camps unauthorized by the Israeli government—although clearly supported by powerful government interests—and illegal under both Israeli and international law. Established in April 2026, these outposts are located on land privately owned by the villagers of Beit Liqya, adjacent to Beit ‘Anan.3 While not inside the municipal boundaries of East Jerusalem, which were unilaterally set by Israel, Beit ‘Anan is part of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Jerusalem Governorate. Some 12.9 percent of the governorate is Palestinian-administered Area B of the West Bank, while the rest is entirely controlled by the Israeli military, Area C, according to the dysfunctional and essentially obsolete Oslo Accords of the mid-1990s.4

“The settlers use drones and they monitor the area. When they see there are activities [from the Palestinian farmers], the settlers come with their bulldozers to dig in the land or take water,” Jad Rabiah, a representative from the Beit ‘Anan Municipality, told Jerusalem Story.5 “We’ve seen settlers that are originally from the US. Some said they were from New York, and some served in Gaza. One or two said they had their son or some relative or some friend killed in Gaza. So—they’re coming here to make a memorial. They’re coming to establish something in their name and memorialize their killing in Gaza.”

In addition to the outposts in Beit ‘Anan, another outpost called Havat Ein LeTzion was established on privately owned Palestinian land in Beit Iksa, a Palestinian village in the Jerusalem Governorate bordering the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina and the Israeli settlement of Ramot in East Jerusalem.

Located on a ridge overlooking Highway 1 and the Jerusalem railway, the outpost was founded by Ivria and Yehuda Noam, the Jerusalem coordinator for Regavim,6 an Israeli settler movement started by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that pursues legal action against Palestinian construction built without official permits.7 In Area C and East Jerusalem, Palestinians are almost never granted building permits due to a discriminatory planning system.8

Beit Iksa farmers say the outpost has seized roughly 1,000 dunams (248 acres) of their land.9 They report that certain settlers recruit and train teenagers to trespass onto their lands with their sheep and harass the villagers, with the complete backing of the Israeli military. The outpost was established on March 10, 2026; violence erupted a month later.

“My son was attacked by the settlers,” a Beit Iksa farmer, who wished not to be named, told Jerusalem Story.10 “He was watering and tending to the trees there. The settlers entered our private land, and they attacked him and kidnapped him.”

His 20-year-old son was eventually released, but ever since, the family has been unable to return to their fields. “I try to go and speak to them in a respectable way—I’m an old man, you can see—but they just call the soldiers, who fire tear gas at us,” he says. The Beit Iksa farmers feel especially vulnerable, because they are isolated. They have worked the land here for generations but say the recent violence is linked to the far-right Israeli government.

“We’ve been trying to approach our land again without success,” the farmer said. “When the settlers see us coming to our land to pick some of the produce, they call the army, the army comes and a confrontation ensues, and the army declares it a closed military zone where we’re not supposed to be anymore and they kick us out.”

Through Regavim, Yehuda Noam has recruited individuals to volunteer at Havat Ein LeTzion.11 The outpost is also raising donations through the Rujum-Zionist Entrepreneurship, an organization promoting Israeli settlement in Palestine, on JGive, an Israeli fundraising platform.12

The outpost’s JGive profile says it was established to “restore security” following the Ramot Junction shooting in September 2025.

“After the attack at Ramot Junction and the wave of repeated break-ins to neighborhood homes, we decided to take action—by establishing a strategic settlement point that will restore security and calm to the area,” the fundraising page says.13 “The new farm will serve as a security, agricultural, and tourism hub—strengthening our foothold on the land, encouraging visits and learning about settlement life, and bringing prosperity and growth to the entire region.”

The outpost has also attracted the attention of Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King (see Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Plugs New Plan to Reduce the Number of Non-Jews in the Country and What Does the Israel Land Fund Do for Jews? Director Arieh King Explains), who has encouraged his followers on Facebook to visit the outpost, writing, “You are invited to take a hike to Havat Ein LeTzion . . . get to know the new pioneering Jewish settlement north of Jerusalem—Havat Ein LeTzion—and show your support for the pioneers and those restoring Jewish settlement in the area; these are the settlers who stand as a buffer between Jerusalem and hostile villages to the north.”14

Before the outpost was established, King said he was working to build a settlement between Beit Iksa and Ramot. In October 2025, he wrote on Facebook that he toured the area with his “United” faction “with the intention of promoting a continuous Jewish presence that will intersect between Beit Iksa and Jerusalem.”15

“If you’re looking at the surrounding [area] of Jerusalem, we saw a few settlements in recent years [being established]. Beit Iksa is one of them,” Hagit Ofran, codirector of Israeli activist group Peace Now’s Settlement Watch Project, told Jerusalem Story.16 “I don’t think they are planning to build a settlement there, but a touristic site—to make this area more available for Israelis to walk, to hang out. And they also have a goal to kick out the Bedouin communities from there.”

While the outposts are not located within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, one such outpost—since dismantled—was established near the Jerusalem village of Nu‘man in April 2026.

Settlers from the outpost harassed and attacked Palestinians in Nu‘man and in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Umm Tuba—entering their lands, raiding homes, and assaulting residents (see Israel Increasing Efforts to Expel Jerusalem’s Palestinian Villages).17 Ir Amim, an Israeli organization monitoring Jerusalem policy, contacted the Israeli-run Jerusalem Municipality, which then evacuated the outpost. While it only existed for around two weeks, human rights defenders do not believe the outpost is gone for good.

“We’re not under the illusion that this is the end of the story,” Ir Amim researcher Aviv Tatarsky told Jerusalem Story.18 “We assume they will try to come back.”

Since 2022, settler farming outposts have cropped up everywhere in the West Bank, exploiting agricultural practices to expel Palestinian shepherding communities.19 This form of settler terror has displaced at least 78 Palestinian Bedouin villages in the West Bank (see The Bedouin of Jerusalem and Israel Accelerates Plans to Build E1, Entailing Mass Displacement of Bedouin Communities).20 Now the phenomenon is inching closer to Jerusalem.

Since January 2025, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded the displacement of 3,966 Palestinians from settler attacks; 91 of those people forced out of their homes were in the Jerusalem Governorate. Most of the displacement in Jerusalem still happens from the demolition of structures built without a permit, but the settlers are clearly emboldened.21

“Since it happens in the West Bank—anywhere settlers want—then why should it stop there? Why should it not go into East Jerusalem, into the Green Line?” Tatarsky said. “It’s very clear that this kind of aggression will not stop at any boundary.”