Afrasianetn - The phrase "From the Yellow Time to the Yellow Line" in the title of this word is inspired by a striking new article by Professor Oren Yiftachael, a researcher specializing in political and legal geography and urban planning and a professor at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, and his reference in context to the fact that some 40 years ago, in April 1987, the Israeli writer David Grossman published the book "The Yellow Time" (which has been translated internationally as "The Yellow Wind"), a text that seemed like a cautious prophecy It contains the effects of the occupation in the 1967 territories on Israelis and Palestinians alike."
It was a journalistic investigation Grossman conducted in the West Bank a few months before the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada. The investigation documented Grossman's travels across the West Bank, revealed to the Israeli public, which he described as indifferent, the reality of the contaminated, rotten, and violent occupation, and warned that continued ignorance of this reality would lead to disaster. Less than eight months later, the first Palestinian intifada broke out.
The book's Hebrew title, "Yellow Time," refers to the state of mind of the Jewish public in Israel toward the horrors of the occupation: ignorance, indifference, and spiritual dryness. Grossman writes: "For twenty years we have been living in a distorted and absurd situation, based on illusions, on a fragile balance between hatred and fear, in an emotional and mental desert, and transient time is gradually transforming into an independent, heavy entity, hanging above us like a layer of suffocating yellow dust."
Grossman concluded his impressions with a prophecy of anger: "There are those who say that this way can go on for many years, and that over time the 'fabric of life' (shared knowledge, economic relations, etc.) will overcome hostility.
This is nonsense, and reality proves it now. The longer the current 'fabric of life' continues, the more it will turn out to be woven around an iron fist of hatred and a desire for revenge... And one day we will wake up to a surprise... World historical experience has shown that a situation like the one we maintain here cannot last long. If it continues, it demands a fatal price."
This prophecy came true several months later, as mentioned above, and since then it has not ceased to be fulfilled. However, the enormous anger that erupted on October 7, 2023, was predicted in Grossman's book, and since 1987, by a Palestinian sheikh named Abu Harb. When this sheikh heard the title of the Hebrew book, "The Yellow Time," which symbolizes indifference to the occupation, another Arabic name, "Yellow Wind," came to his mind.
"From the door of hell the wind will come... A hot and terrible east wind, which comes once every few generations, ignites the whole region, and people flee from its anger to caves and temptations, but there it also catches up with those it wants to catch up, those who have committed acts of injustice and cruelty, and there, in the cracks of the rocks, it kills them one by one.
After a day like this, the ground will be covered with corpses. The rocks will turn white from the heat, and the mountains will crumble into dust that settles on the ground like yellow cotton."
After the dust settled on the recent wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, Yiftachel feels that the warning of "yellow time" has created new horizons for his understanding of current life, so he takes the initiative to build bridges with it and soon realizes that it has turned into a "yellow line," that is, an inscription on the ground that symbolizes violent expansion, destruction, and ethnic cleansing.
The Yellow Lines have declared "new borders" in Gaza and Lebanon (among others), and similar steps are taking place in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Negev.
The Yellow Lines are being pushed away from their land and homes into "yellow pockets," similar to the Palestinian areas that were mapped more than 30 years ago in the form of yellow patches.
These yellow lines are presented as a security response to "violence and terrorism," but in reality they represent de facto annexation of territory, without payment Any political or legal price. From a historical perspective, the yellow lines represent, for many, a new, old phase in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict whose pillars have been expansion, destruction, and ethnic cleansing since the 1948 Nakba.
Yiftachel also points out that despite the Oslo Accords, the Zionist movement's settlement and expansionist impulse, supported by institutions and funding, has never ceased to boil beneath the surface. Since the return of the Likud party to power in 2009, and especially during the last decade, Israel has accelerated the project of Judaizing the country and establishing an apartheid regime based on spatial discrimination and ethnic hierarchy, through supportive legislation, the establishment of dozens of settlements and outposts in the territories occupied since 1967, the imposition of a suffocating blockade on the Gaza Strip, and the weakening of the PA The Palestinians are stripped of their land and the two million Arab citizens inside Israel are kept in a political ghetto. The "Judicial Amendment Plan" also aimed to weaken what remains of Israeli opposition to these policies.
The events of October 7 ("Yellow Wind") did not change the essence of Israel's policy of expansion, destruction, and ethnic cleansing, but rather its acceleration, in the words of Yiftachael. "The severe blow that Israel received, represented by the death, destruction, and displacement of more than 100,000 citizens for the first time in its history, did not lead to self-review, responsibility, or a change in approach, but rather to the Israeli government accelerating the pace of the strategy itself.
Jewish expansion, the displacement of the Palestinians, and the deepening of the apartheid regime." At the same time, the settlement project has also accelerated: extensive land confiscation and purchases, more than 200 outposts and 100 settlement farms in the West Bank, and the approval of some 100 new settlements, as well as 18 new Jewish communities in the Negev.
The researcher believes that it is likely that we will soon see the establishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza, and perhaps also in Lebanon. The slogan may change from "from the sea to the river" to "from the sea to the rivers," referring to early Zionist conceptions of a state that extends to the Litani River.
It was natural that the West Bank would receive special attention as it undergoes major transformations under the current Israeli government as it nears the end of its term.
The latest of these shifts is a new report by Bimkom – Planning and Human Rights, which confirmed that since the beginning of 2023, the Central Military Region Command has issued 114 military orders to define or expand the municipal areas of influence of settlements in the West Bank, a number equivalent to the total number issued during the previous 22 years Combined.
Under these orders, more than 25,000 dunams were added to the areas of influence of the settlements in the West Bank, which today amount to about 546,000 dunams, equivalent to 16.5 percent of the area of Area C, an area equivalent to the area of all the cities in the Gush Dan area.
In total, according to the report, 53 new settlements have been identified areas of influence, including 39 entirely new settlements and 14 settlements that have arisen as a result of the separation of neighborhoods from existing settlements and granting them independent settlement status, in addition to expanding the areas of influence of 11 old settlements.
While new and ever-expanding areas of influence have been allocated to settlements, no single area of influence has been identified for any Palestinian city or town since the 1970s.
The area of influence is the municipal area of a city, local council, or settlement, i.e., the boundaries within which the local authority has the authority to administer land, plan, and provide services.
In the West Bank, these areas are determined by an order issued by the military commander, and not through the usual planning and civil administration system, without the publication of the decision, and without providing any procedures for objection, while the Palestinian population, who are the most affected by these decisions, are not given any possibility of objecting to them. The determination of the area of influence represents the phase.
The first in a series of procedures determines in advance the boundaries of land on which it will be possible to plan, build and expand the settlement in the future, even before any plan or settlement is approved. On May 31, a single military order designated areas of influence for nine new settlements in the northern West Bank, an area where there had been little Jewish settlement presence until then.
This is only the culmination of an ongoing process of intensive and systematic use of the mechanism of determining settlement spheres of influence through military orders, which is considered a form of practical annexation of the West Bank.
In the "Humghzar (Center or Sector)" podcast of the website "Olam Katan (Small World)", Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is in charge of settlement affairs in the West Bank, reviewed what he described as his achievements, saying: "103 settlements, 160 settlement farms, one million dunams, regularization, 60,000 housing units under construction, and 7 billion shekels for roads that will bring in one million people (settlers)."
He added that the aim of these steps is to "turn the settlement into irreversible," as part of what he described as "the mission of eliminating the terrible idea of dividing the (occupied) territories."
While the public debate usually focuses on the legalization of outposts or the ratification of new neighborhoods, the Bemkom report argues that the identification of areas of influence has become one of the most important tools used to promote de facto annexation, along with the declaration of "state lands," the use of archaeology, and the allocation of grazing contracts.
This is the first step in the process, through which it pre-determines the land on which future planning, infrastructure, and settlement expansion can be established. In other words, the state determines in advance which lands will serve settlement expansion before approving any construction plan or establishing a new settlement.
Since the formation of the current Israeli government, decisions have been taken to establish 102 new settlements, and the determination of the area of influence is the first step in implementing these decisions.
The report notes that the boundaries of the areas of influence are not drawn according to planning considerations or the needs of the settlement, but rather according to the distribution of available "state land." Some of these lands are not originally suitable for construction and do not meet the most basic planning criteria, which reinforces the report's conclusion that the purpose of these boundaries is to establish the largest possible Israeli presence on the land and to exclude the Palestinian population from it, not to serve urban planning.
The report notes that the northern West Bank is another major expansion hotspot. Since the formation of the government, 16 areas of influence have been identified within the Shomron Regional Council, which controls most of the northern West Bank, an area that has virtually no settlement presence since the evacuation of settlements under the "Disengagement Plan" (2005), giving these steps strategic importance.
In 2026, the state began using spheres of influence as well to prevent the return of displaced Palestinian communities, thereby consolidating their displacement on the ground.
New areas of influence have been established on the lands from which Palestinian communities have been uprooted in recent years: the Kanfei Hashahar outpost was established on the ruins of Ein Samia and the Mitsuki Haaretz was established on the ruins of the central Ma'arajat community, two communities that disintegrated during the wave of displacement in the Jordan Valley.
The report emphasizes that the identification of the area of influence makes the return of these communities much more difficult. This acceleration in the expansion of the settlements' spheres of influence is offset by a deliberate stalemate with respect to the Palestinians. No new sphere of influence has been defined for any Palestinian city or town since the 1970s.
During the first decade of the occupation, about 25 areas of influence were designated by military orders for Palestinian communities, mainly the built-up areas that later became areas A and B according to the Oslo Accords, in addition to some areas in C such as Nablus and Al-Bireh.
The report notes that even where Palestinian spheres of influence exist within Area C, Israel can modify them and annex them to the areas of influence of the regional councils of settlements, as was the case with the preparation of a plan for an Israeli industrial zone near Tulkarm.
The absence of spheres of influence weakens the ability of the Palestinian authorities to manage their municipal affairs, makes planning decisions arbitrary and without a clear framework, and prevents the needs of the population in Area C from being met.
The state pledged to the Supreme Court eight years ago to change this reality, but has not yet implemented it, so the report considers the delimitation of areas of influence to be an additional mechanism for discriminatory allocation of public land for the benefit of settlers alone.
The report documents a new phenomenon represented in the annexation of the settlements' areas of influence to areas A and B, which are under full or partial Palestinian control, according to the Oslo Accords.
According to the report, this step aims to limit Palestinian urban development even within those areas, deepen their fragmentation, and create an infrastructure to expand settlement activity within them, which constitutes a step on the road to dismantling the Oslo Accords.
Once a land is included in a settlement area of influence, Palestinian entry to it becomes legally prohibited. In some cases, areas of influence include roads leading to Palestinian villages, and their closure by settlement security services or through construction disrupts movement between villages and deprives residents of access to their agricultural land.
The long-term goal is to push Palestinian communities to leave gradually, describing this as an "ethnic cleansing" of Area C and the seizure of all of these areas for the benefit of Jewish settlers only.
Assaf Bild, city planner at Bemkom, says:
"Areas of influence are often seen as a technical or administrative matter, but in reality they determine who can develop the land, who can use it, and who will be excluded from it."
He added that the sharp increase in the number of military orders since October 7, 2023, indicates that the identification of areas of influence has become one of the central tools used by the Israeli government to redraw the geography of the West Bank.
"What we are witnessing today is not only the expansion of existing settlements, but also the establishment of a new reality in areas from which Palestinian communities have been uprooted in recent years, making it more difficult for them to return," Bild concludes.
