Socialist-Zionist Israeli group plans Jordan Valley settlement to 'ensure left-wing presence'

A left-wing Israeli youth movement is seeking to establish a kibbutz-style community in the occupied Jordan Valley, prompting criticism from anti-settlement campaigners who say the politics of its prospective residents do not alter the project’s implications for Palestinians.

HaMachanot HaOlim, a youth movement that identifies as socialist-Zionist, has been exploring the creation of a new settlement in the Jordan Valley in recent months, according to reporting by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The initiative is presented as a bid to establish a left-wing Israeli presence in an area increasingly associated with far-right settler groups and violence against Palestinians.

The organisation’s director Ilan Gazit – himself a resident of the Na’aran kibbutz north of Jericho – explained to the Israeli outlet the rationale behind the move: since new illegal settlements will likely be built in the West Bank, it’s preferable to populate them with leftists rather than right-wing settlers.

But Hagit Ofran, co-director of Settlement Watch at Israeli peace movement Peace Now, said the initiative should be judged by its location and political function, rather than by the political outlook of those behind it.

"In terms of the conflict and the political meaning of a settlement – it’s just the same," Ofran told The New Arab. "A settlement is a settlement: it’s not part of Israel, it’s occupied territories. And if we bring Israelis to live there, it’s not only a violation of international law – it’s also destroying the possibility to have peace and to have Palestinian independence."

The proposal has revived a longstanding tension in Israeli political history: while the settler movement is commonly associated internationally with the religious right and its most militant factions, settlement-building has never belonged solely to Israel’s right wing.

Labour’s settlement legacy

The kibbutz itself is inseparable from the history of Labour Zionism: a collective agricultural community model central to the Zionist movement’s project of establishing and consolidating Jewish communities in historic Palestine.

After Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, Labour-led governments drove the early phase of settlement construction, with the Jordan Valley at its centre.

The approach was shaped by the Allon Plan, developed by Labour minister Yigal Allon soon after the war. Though never formally adopted, it envisaged Israeli control over a broad eastern strip of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, as a strategic buffer.

"The settlements that started there actually started under the Labour Party, not the right wing," she said. "There were many kibbutzim there, and they didn’t see themselves as messianic settlers."

She argued, however, that the security argument used to justify the valley’s continued control is obsolete.

"We grew up on the myth that the West Bank is a security asset for Israel," Ofran said, referring to historic fears that armies from Jordan, Syria or Iraq could advance through the valley towards Jerusalem.

"That myth that it’s needed for security is already very old. The threat on Israel is not from tanks. We have today ballistic rockets that can hit any point in Israel, and the fact that you have more land or less land does not change this vulnerability."

"The way to get peace is through agreements," she added. "We need to allow the Palestinians some independence, so that we can solve this conflict and not control them forever."

Palestinian displacement and Israeli settler violence

For Palestinians, the Jordan Valley is a major part of the occupied West Bank whose future is central to the possibility of a geographically contiguous Palestinian state. Israel has imposed sweeping restrictions on Palestinian construction and development across much of the area while settlements, outposts and Israeli-controlled infrastructure have expanded.

"Except for the enclave of Jericho and the adjacent town of 'Auja, the Jordan Valley went through something that you cannot really define differently but ethnic cleansing," Ofran told The New Arab.

"Palestinians were kicked out of their lands and not allowed to cultivate the land, starting already in ’67, when the Israeli authorities declared most of the Jordan Valley a military zone."

She said restrictions on Palestinian development had been compounded by recent settler violence. "We have dozens of communities and families that lost their homes because of settler violence," she said.

Numerous human rights organisations, including Peace Now, have documented an intensified Israeli drive to displace Palestinian shepherding communities in the northern Jordan Valley since October 2023, alongside the expansion of settler farms and outposts.

Ofran said the newer sites are often small, with only a few residents, but can wield control over extensive areas.

"It’s not a dramatic increase in the number of settlers in the Jordan Valley," she said. "It’s small settlements, those that are referred to as farms, where you only have, I don’t know, 10 people sometimes living in one place. But it’s a dramatic increase in the number of settlements."

The initiative also raises a wider question on whether rejecting settler violence is enough to distinguish a purportedly progressive settlement from the settlement enterprise itself.

"People tend to think that the problem is only their violence," Ofran said. "Had it been that they were nice, there wouldn’t be occupation, and I think that’s wrong."

"The violence of the settlers is a huge problem, and it’s the responsibility of the government that supports them and [is] not doing anything to them. But the problem of occupation is not if you are nice or not. If you are taking Palestinian land politely or violently, that’s not the problem. The problem is that we are taking other people’s land and we keep them without rights."

The proposal comes amid an acceleration in settlement activity. Peace Now said in April that a secret Israeli security cabinet decision had approved 34 new settlements, illegal under international law, adding to 68 new settlements it said the government had already decided to establish since taking office.