Area C

Hebron, it's part of Area A, but it was then subdivided because the Jews, the Israelis had already settled in Hebron.

So Hebron has areas A, and it also has areas that are Area C, in effect.

Area B are rural Palestinian areas, agricultural villages, and so forth.

Now in Area A, which is, I don't know, 17% or something like that.

But at least in theory, until recently, there were no Israelis living in either Area A or B.

Lately, we've had with the militant settlers supported by the Netanyahu government, they have begun to encroach into Area B here and there.

Area C is the rest of the West Bank, which is fully half the West Bank.

Yeah.

And C is under complete Israeli control.

So we were all told that Area C is 60% of Judea and Samaria.

Now you will note that most of the area that is not red is actually the Jordan Valley, and wisely for them, they included the sea in order to enlarge Area C, by which I mean the Dead Sea.

You see this green line passing in the middle of the water of the Dead Sea? So if you take out this area, which is the Jordan Valley and the sea, then areas A and B are 80% of what is left.

And it's all on the mountain ridge.

However, it is contested by the ranchers.

And now the ranchers project is very effective in preventing a takeover of the territory.

The ranchers promoted by this government, and especially Smotrich and his party, there are about 130 legal ranchers mostly in Area C.

Sure.

And can I just give a wider picture before I speak about the Bedouins or the Palestinian Bedouins in E1? the geography in the Occupied West Bank and the divisions of the Oslo Accords made it so that in Area C, which is more than 60% of the Occupied West Bank under direct control of the Israeli military, is all the areas outside of the population centers.

Area C does not include the built up areas of the cities and villages.

So it's mostly like open areas that Palestinian Bedouins rely on for grazing for their Bedouin lifestyle.

You know, their nomadic Bedouin lifestyle.

They need open areas and they are the most vulnerable communities in Palestine, Palestinian Bedouins or people living in the more remote areas, because here in the West Bank, it's strength in numbers or protection in numbers.

A settler won't come into a big city with a lot of tens of thousands of Palestinians but they'll go to a bedouin village with a few hundred people to attack because it's much easier for them to attack them so what we saw particularly after october 7th but even before since 2022 we saw israeli settlers armed by the government and funded erasing Palestinian Bedouin villages, one by one, and the entire area from Ramallah to Jericho, where there used to be the highest concentration of Palestinian Bedouins living, is completely emptied of any Palestinian Bedouin village.

So they have emptied the majority of Area C of its Palestinian residents, including the Bedouins, and now they're going to Area B, which is the villages.

And so they are going off and building anywhere they want across the West Bank.

There are people in the israeli political landscape who believe that they should be basically be sticking to area c which to be clear is still over 60 of the west bank um and then the other thing is just the the outpost movement which is an outpost is a settlement that is not even authorized by israel so it is basically like a band of you know settlers go out violently empty a palestinian bedouin community or something plant a tent there and decide this is a settlement now Recently, in the last couple of years, Israel, the government, has been very quick to come in and retroactively authorize those outposts, to turn them into actual settlements.

Whereas, I think there may be some more centrist parties in Israel who would not want those outposts going up, who would try to dismantle them in fairness.

But again, the fundamentals of the settlement movement, which is about settling.

You know, people who, everyone who first encounters this map of Palestine is struck by the zones, the fact that Palestine is not a continuous entity, but is broken up into these many, it's an archipelago of Essentially, can you tell us a little bit for those of us who haven't been here and see these A and B zones and this and the C zone on the ground? I mean, you emphasize there what the official legal sovereignty distinction is between areas that Palestinians normally control.

But what what is it actually like these these archipelagos try to help us understand what this feels like?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think the The sort of clearest way that you can tell it's non-contiguous is that it's impossible to travel from one Palestinian village to another if you have to go across Area C, in some cases, or just various checkpoints.

So if I'm in Masafriyata in the south and I want to get up to Bethlehem, which is not that far north of it, I mean, it should be a short drive.

Their choice is to sell their livestock and leave, or try to hold on and stay for as long as possible.

Last week, Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli army sources saying that some of the families have their homes built without permits in Area C. the approximately 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli civil and military control under the Oslo Accords, where Israel's civil administration bans Palestinian construction.

So now what they're going to end up doing is leveling all those houses that they didn't have permits to build.

The army said each family's case was being examined separately through the legal system.

They let them vote.

There's Palestinian Israeli citizens.

Israel carries out demolitions of Palestinian-owned structures in Area C of the occupied West Bank, which I just mentioned, which again remains under full Israeli administrative and security control, frequently on the grounds that they were built without Israeli-issued permits.

Again, because they were built before Israel was anywhere in control of any of those areas.

you've

got the West Bank in a sector, Area C, that is controlled by the Israelis.

Jordan is in a very dangerous neighborhood, isn't it?

Yeah, indeed, Bill.

To the west, there's the West Bank, of course.

And I actually want to separate this one from the others because Jordan, It is not as occasional the way Syria is.

It is a more structural issue in terms of settlement expansion, annexation pressure, the slow absorption of Area C.

It is, I would say, arguably the border that Jordan worries about the most, precisely because it's becoming worse as we speak.

It is official government policy.

The focus has principally been so-called Area C of the occupied West Bank.

That's the area under the Oslo Accords that constitutes about 60% of the West Bank.

It's where all the settlements are.

And basically, it looks like if the Israelis did...

I use this term purposely if they were to evacuate the territory of the West Bank.

I mean, just look at I mean, here's Area C.

This is.

And it-- I think it's pretty clear what Israel is trying to do, um, whether it declares it or not.

Both sides, the PA and Israel, are fighting for the same resources, which is mostly Area C in Judea and Samaria.

Uh, up until just a few years ago, the Palestinians were the ones who had a significant advantage in having clarity, having a strategy, plan, and building and expanding existing, uh, Arab communities in Judea and Samaria in Area C in violation of the Oslo Accords.

They were building in many, many places that they were not supposed to be building.

Uh, but they basically-

Uh, he was probably one of the least corrupt, and he was prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in the 2010 area, maybe a little bit before, a little bit after.

And he came up with the Salam Fayyad Plan.

The Fayyad Plan, which is basically a plan, a blueprint, a roadmap for how Palestinians would build and create facts on the ground in areas A, B, and C of Judea and Samaria in violation of the Oslo Accords, in order to prevent Jewish communities, that you refer to as settlements, from expanding or from linking up to each other, uh, in Area C.