Israel Advances 500km Barrier and 40 Planned Outposts Along Jordan Valley, Cutting Palestinian Farmland

Irrigation pipes cut. Greenhouses gone. Farmers on one side of a new barrier, their fields on the other.

That is the picture emerging from a stretch of Israel's eastern frontier project known as "Crimson Thread," a section of a planned 500km security barrier that, according to reporting by The New Arab, runs several kilometres inside the occupied West Bank rather than along the internationally recognised Israel-Jordan border. The route was established through nine separate Israeli land-seizure orders, cutting across the northern Jordan Valley and severing Palestinian communities from farmland they have long worked.

Construction on the wider barrier began in 2025, with an initial phase covering roughly 80km of the eventual 500km span, stretching from the occupied Golan Heights to the area north of Eilat. The project combines physical barriers with surveillance towers, radar, cameras, communications infrastructure and access roads. Mine clearance has already taken place along sections of the planned route, according to the reporting.

Alongside the barrier, Israel is pursuing plans for around 40 new Nahal settlement groups along the eastern border, paired with agricultural farms in the same corridor, The New Arab reports. Jordanian analysts who spoke to the outlet describe the project as part of a broader pattern of settlement expansion that already spans the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon border areas.

Jordanian military analyst Jalal al-Abbadi told the outlet that outposts in central and northern border areas already involve armed settlers functioning as an informal first line of defence for Israeli forces, and warned the pattern could eventually harden into a security belt, though he said it does not yet meet that description. He also warned the outposts risk attracting outside extremists and displacing nearby residents.

Ayman al-Haniti, an Israeli-affairs expert in Jordan, described the mine-clearance and construction work as an effort to build what he called a "human barrier," combining settlements, training camps and military bases along more than 300km of frontier.

"Jordan will be deprived of the resources located along the border strip," al-Haniti said, warning that the settlements and farms being planned could strain groundwater and other shared resources.

The barrier and outpost expansion are unfolding alongside separate demolition orders elsewhere in the West Bank. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently announced the demolition of 35 Palestinian buildings along access routes to new settlements in the northern West Bank, framing the move as protection for Israeli settlement growth, according to the reporting. Those demolitions are not directly tied to the Jordan border project but form part of the same expansion pattern across occupied territory.

Jordanian political analyst Amer al-Sabaileh linked the intensified activity to Israeli concerns about weapons and infiltration across the frontier, particularly since October 7, 2023, saying Israel has increased military exercises and security infrastructure at the border. He said Israel is applying "the same security logic" used in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria to its border with Jordan.

None of the claims in this account carry independent Israeli government confirmation of timelines or outpost counts. The details on land seizures, demolished agricultural infrastructure and the Crimson Thread route are attributed to The New Arab's reporting and the named Jordanian analysts it cites.