English version, “Part One: Seizing Control of Hundreds of Thousands of Dunams Through Shepherding Outposts”
| Document | השומרוני הרע – ביזת קרקעות ע"י מתנחלים באמצעות מרעה 3 |
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| Published | 2025-04-06 |
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| Address | https://peacenow.org.il/the-bad-samarian-land-grabbing |
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| Archived copy | 2025-05-29 |
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| Access | primary |
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| Corroboration | single-source |
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The document was re-opened on 2026-09-28 and the quoted sentence appears in it word for word, at the address below.
https://peacenow.org.il/en/the-bad-samaritan-land-grabbing-by-settlers-through-grazing
How this is checked, and how to check it yourself
How the source established it
The summary page does not describe how the 786,000 dunams were measured; it refers to “An analysis of the land seized by Israeli settlers”. The full report’s methodology section (printed p. 16) says the lands were “assessed and mapped by observing signs that Palestinian agricultural lands had remained uncultivated for extended periods, as well as evidence of road construction, water infrastructure installation, and the construction of fences and gates”, and that “interviews and discussions with Palestinian shepherds and farmers” provided “crucial insights”.
What the source does not claim
The two language versions qualify the figure differently, and the difference is the qualification itself. The English reads “at least 786,000 dunams” and “equivalent to 14%”. The Hebrew reads “כ-786,000” and “כ-14%” — the prefix כ- means “about”. “At least” is a floor; “about” is a central estimate that could be lower.
English summary, Part One, first sentence; Hebrew summary, same sentence
The full report describes the figure as an assessment. Its methodology section is headed “Methodology: How was the extent of grazing lands seized by settlers estimated?” and its key-findings section reads “Our assessments indicate that settlers living in shepherding outposts currently control approximately 786,000 dunams of land, representing nearly 14% of the West Bank’s total area.”
Full report (English PDF), printed p. 16 (methodology) and p. 17 (key findings); pages 19 and 20 of the PDF
The summary page is dated 6 April 2025 (“06.4.25”) and gives no date for the figure. The second page of the full report reads “December 2024”, and its text says “By December 2024, 70 new shepherding outposts had been erected across all three categories.”
English summary page, date line; full report (English PDF), second page of the PDF, and printed p. 12 (page 15 of the PDF)
The full report says what “control” does and does not mean here: “Describing lands as being under settler control does not necessarily mean that Palestinian entry is entirely prohibited in every instance. The level of restriction varies, ranging from complete denial of entry to significant limitations on Palestinian access.”
Full report (English PDF), printed p. 16 (page 19 of the PDF)
A dunam is 1,000 square metres. The report supplies its own conversion, 4.04 dunams to an acre. The figure is given here in the unit the report uses.
English version, same sentence
The Hebrew summary page carries, in the same paragraph, a figure the English summary page does not: settlers took over 70% of the total area seized for grazing within about two and a half years (machine translation of the Hebrew, not reviewed by a human). The full English report gives a 70% figure in two places, and words its base differently. Its summary reads “In less than three years, 70% of all land seized by settlers to date has been taken under the guise of grazing activities”; its findings, in a list about shepherding-outpost settlers, read “within just two and a half years, settlers managed to seize 70% of the total area they had taken over since the 1990s”. These are statements about the pace of the seizure.
Hebrew summary, sentence following the 786,000 figure; full report (English PDF), printed p. 1 (page 4 of the PDF) and printed p. 20 (page 23 of the PDF)
The same report states that settlers displaced more than 60 Palestinian shepherding communities and established at least 14 Israeli shepherding outposts on or near their former lands. Those are separate counts, not components of the 786,000.
English version, same section
The report says that most of the land taken is not “state land”, even by Israel’s own definitions. In the source’s words: “An analysis of the land seized by Israeli settlers shows that the majority are not classified as ‘state lands,’ even under Israel’s own definitions, making up only 40% of the areas taken.”
English version, “Part One: Seizing Control of Hundreds of Thousands of Dunams Through Shepherding Outposts”
The report says that around 41% of the seized land is inside areas settlers are themselves officially forbidden to enter. In the source’s words: “Around 41% of the seized lands have been designated as “firing zones” by the Israeli military – restricted areas where civilians without permanent residency, including settlers, are officially banned from entering.”
English version, “Part One: Seizing Control of Hundreds of Thousands of Dunams Through Shepherding Outposts”
The 80,000-dunam allocation figure that appears in this report is not the authors' own count: they attribute it to the State Attorney's Office. “According to the State Attorney’s Office, the Settlement Division has allocated approximately 80,000 dunams of West Bank land to settlers for grazing purposes.”
English version, “Part Two: Grazing Land Allocation Contracts with Settlers”
The table’s categories overlap and are not a partition. Read down the percentage column and the seven rows total 152%, not 100%; the dunam column totals 1,196,252 against a stated total of 786,000. The report’s own “only 40%” for state land matches the sum of two of those rows, 15.5% and 25.3% (40.8%). Adding the rows to obtain a new figure would be an operation the source does not perform.
English summary, table “Land seized through shepherding outposts”
Who counted
The 786,000 figure is the authors’ own assessment. The table’s ownership categories rest on Israeli state sources, as its footnote and row labels say: “Lands marked as private on Israeli Civil Administration maps”, “Lands with no ownership information on Israeli Civil Administration maps”, “State lands registered in the Israeli land registry”. The 80,000-dunam allocation figure is the State Attorney’s Office’s, as the authors report it. Peace Now and Kerem Navot are Israeli organisations, not parties to the conflict, operating under the authority of one party and documenting that authority’s acts.
Note from the register
The report qualifies the figure differently from one text to another: “at least” in the English summary, “about” (כ-) in the Hebrew summary, “approximately” in the key findings of the English full report.
— Only Receipts
Provenance and verification — where this document came from, and what we could not
check ourselves
- The opening of the same paragraph in the Hebrew version, which the page declares to be the same document. Its second sentence has no counterpart in the English: « בדו"ח זה של כרם נבות ושלום עכשיו, אנחנו חושפים כי המתנחלים במאחזי הרועים השתלטו עד היום על כ-786,000 דונם שמהווים כ-14% משטח הגדה המערבית. למעשה, בתוך כשנתיים וחצי השתלטו מתנחלים על 70% מכלל השטח שעליו השתלטו עד היום לשם רעייה. »
- The English quoted here is Peace Now’s own English edition. Where the Hebrew is given, it is carried verbatim and the English given for it is machine translation, not reviewed by a human.
- The English version published by Peace Now was opened on 2026-09-19 at the address the Hebrew page declares for it in its own hreflang tag, after re-reading that site's robots file: it forbids only /wp-admin/, declares no delay, and does not name us. Nothing was re-analysed here. What is cited here is the publisher’s summary page. The full report in English (62 pages, https://peacenow.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The_Bad_Samaritan_ENG.pdf) was opened on 3 October 2026; the passages quoted from it are given with their printed page. The Arabic edition is not read.
- Peace Now is an Israeli organisation documenting the acts of its own government. Palestinian organisations are entered at the same standard.
Words used here, and what each one means:
Dunam · Outpost · Settlement · State land · Firing zone
Cite this — the source document first, this entry second
Citing the document is what carries weight. This entry is where
you found it.
Plain text
Peace Now — Settlement Watch (שלום עכשיו). השומרוני הרע – ביזת קרקעות ע"י מתנחלים באמצעות מרעה. 2025-04-06. At English version, “Part One: Seizing Control of Hundreds of Thousands of Dunams Through Shepherding Outposts”. https://peacenow.org.il/the-bad-samarian-land-grabbing.
Consulted via Only Receipts, entry grazing-2025-001, https://www.onlyreceipts.org/entries/grazing-2025-001/ (entry last changed 2026-10-04).
BibTeX
@techreport{onlyreceipts-grazing-2025-001,
author = {Peace Now — Settlement Watch (שלום עכשיו)},
title = {השומרוני הרע – ביזת קרקעות ע"י מתנחלים באמצעות מרעה},
year = {2025},
institution = {Peace Now — Settlement Watch (שלום עכשיו)},
url = {https://peacenow.org.il/the-bad-samarian-land-grabbing},
urldate = {2026-09-18},
note = {English version, “Part One: Seizing Control of Hundreds of Thousands of Dunams Through Shepherding Outposts”. Consulted via Only Receipts, https://www.onlyreceipts.org/entries/grazing-2025-001/},
} RIS — Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley
TY - RPRT
AU - Peace Now — Settlement Watch (שלום עכשיו)
TI - השומרוני הרע – ביזת קרקעות ע"י מתנחלים באמצעות מרעה
PY - 2025
DA - 2025/04/06
UR - https://peacenow.org.il/the-bad-samarian-land-grabbing
N1 - Locator: English version, “Part One: Seizing Control of Hundreds of Thousands of Dunams Through Shepherding Outposts”
N1 - Consulted via Only Receipts, entry grazing-2025-001, https://www.onlyreceipts.org/entries/grazing-2025-001/
ER -