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Bardalah, the Jordan Valley: Settlers set fire to a field with an irrigation system and a farm shack in Qa’un Plain

Bardalah, the Jordan Valley: Settlers set fire to a field with an irrigation system and a farm shack in Qa’un Plain

Field torched by settlers. Photo: Jordan Valley activists
Field torched by settlers. Photo: Jordan Valley activists

In the early morning hours of Thursday, 3 July 2025, local Palestinian residents saw armed settlers wandering around Qa’un Plain, north of Bardalah. Later that morning, Muhammad Suaftah, 49, a farmer from Bardalah, discovered that settlers had set fire to one of his fields, where he had leftover hay and grain. The fire destroyed the drip irrigation system and about 350 meters of irrigation piping belonging to Suaftah and other farmers.

The shack burned by settlers. Photo: ‘Aref Daraghmeh, B’Tselem

On Tuesday morning, 29 July 2025, when Muhammad Suaftah arrived at his farmland in Qa’un Plain, he found that during the night settlers had set fire to a shack adjacent to his watermelon field, which the farmers used as a shaded resting spot.

Since the establishment of an outpost in December 2024, about one kilometer north of Bardalah and roughly 300 meters from the residents’ farmland, settlers have been grazing their herd of cattle in Palestinian fields, damaging farmers’ irrigation systems, and harassing local farmers and shepherds. In April 2025, settlers also burned down a family’s residential compound north of Bardalah, on the edge of Qa’un Plain.