In the 1970s, the Zionist regime poisoned Palestinian land to build settlements

A new publicly accessible archive project shows internal minutes of the Zionist government and military during the early years of the settlement enterprise.Even half a century later, it is difficult to read the minutes of the discussions of the Judea and Samaria Division of the Israeli Forces. Each phase of establishing a settlement in the West Bank is catalogued, step by step, from planning to execution.

The first step was to dispossess the residents of nearby Palestinian villages of their land under the false pretext of making it a military training area. When the Palestinians insisted on cultivating the land, Israeli soldiers sabotaged their tools. Later the soldiers were ordered to use vehicles to destroy crops. When all this was no longer enough, a radical solution was employed: dousing the crops with a toxic chemical. The substance was lethal to animals and dangerous to humans.

The story briefly made headlines in 1972 when it was reported by foreign media. It did not prevent the establishment of the settlement of Gitit on land confiscated from residents of the village of Aqraba, which the military had poisoned. All the details of the story were revealed 51 years later, thanks to a new project by the Taub Center for Israeli Studies at New York University.

The project maps and catalogs all available historical data relating to Israeli settlements. For the first time, thousands of classified files from the Israeli State Archives and other libraries were made public and shed light on one of the most significant movements in Israeli history.

Military files kept in the IDF archives preserve documents detailing the spraying in Aqraba. The first document in the file dates from January 1972, when the IDF Central Command ordered the Jordan Valley Brigade to ensure that "no land was cultivated," including the use of vehicles to destroy existing crops. A document from March of the same year states that the mission was unsuccessful.