Sheepish Settlers: What Is Amana, Israeli Movement At The Centre Of West Bank Expansion?

A handful of sheep, a makeshift farm and a hilltop can achieve something that once required an entire settlement: extending Israeli control over large stretches of land in the occupied West Bank. That strategy has made small shepherding outposts an increasingly important tool of the Israeli settler movement and put Amana, one of its most powerful development organisations, under international scrutiny.

Britain sanctioned Amana in October 2024, accusing it of helping build illegal settler outposts and providing financial and other resources to settlers involved in violence against Palestinian communities. An outpost is a small, remote station set up for military defense, trade, or resource gathering, while a settlement is a larger, established community where people live permanently.

What Is Amana And How Does It Work?

Israeli herding outposts in the West Bank are settler outposts that also function as farms where settlers raise animals and graze them in open areas. Like other outposts, they are illegal under Israeli law, in addition to being illegal under international law. These “farms” are a strategic tool for dispossessing Palestinian herding communities of their land under the guise of agricultural development.

Amana is “the settlement movement of Gush Emunim [and] was established in 1978 with the primary goal of developing communities in Judea, Samaria, The Golan Heights, The Galilee, The Negev and Gush Katif [the settlement in the Gaza Strip that was evacuated in 2005]. This goal includes not only the establishment of communities and their supportive industries and social services but their continued maintenance and development.”

Ze’ev Hever, head of the settler organization Amana,275 explained their purpose in a 2024 interview, saying that “the protection of open areas [in the West Bank] is Amana’s central mission,” as quoted by Amnesty International.

How Shepherd Farms Expand Settlement Control

Amana helps create the infrastructure and financing that allows small settler farms/outposts to establish a presence and potentially control much larger areas of land. In recent years, it has increasingly backed small “shepherding” or agricultural farms, which can control far more land than the physical buildings themselves.

The US Treasury Department says that Amana is a key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement and maintains ties to various persons previously sanctioned by the U.S. government and its partners for perpetrating violence in the West Bank. The settlers and farms that Amana supports play a key role in developing settlements in the West Bank, from which in turn settlers commit violence. More broadly, Amana strategically uses farming outposts, which it supports through financing, loans, and building infrastructure, to expand settlements and seize land. Amana has also been sanctioned by the United Kingdom and Canada.

Although the international community regards all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, Israel distinguishes between homes in settlements that have received authorisation from the Defence Ministry and are constructed on state-owned land, and outposts established without the required permits, many of which are built on privately owned Palestinian land.

Residents of such outposts have frequently been accused of carrying out attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank. These incidents are rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities and have prompted Western countries to impose sanctions over the past year.

Unlike conventional settlements, which require extensive construction, shepherding outposts can establish a presence on open land with relatively little infrastructure. By grazing livestock across surrounding pasture, settlers can extend their practical control well beyond the physical boundaries of the farm, restricting the areas available to Palestinian herders.

According to Peace Now and Kerem Navot, the long-established practice of establishing shepherding outposts for grazing to appropriate large swathes of occupied land accelerated. In their 2025 report, it was stated that Israeli settlers had used shepherding outposts to seize at least 786,000 dunams of land – 14 per cent of the occupied West Bank’s total area.

Guardian described as an example the difference between the land on either side of Route 90: one side still has grass available for Palestinian herders, while on the other side settlers' sheep and goats have grazed much of it away.

Why Britain Sanctioned Amana

The UK Government said Amana had overseen the establishment of illegal outposts and provided funding and other economic resources to Israeli settlers involved in threatening and carrying out acts of aggression and violence against Palestinian communities. Amana operates in practice as a commercial construction company. The sanctions were placed on October 15, 2024 and sanctioned outposts and organisations that have supported and sponsored violence against communities in the West Bank.

The UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said, “the Israeli government must crack down on settler violence and stop settler expansion on Palestinian land”. The statement said that these measures put strict financial restrictions on those who commit these acts. Measures respond to a continued rise in violence that is devastating Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

Palestinian herding communities are particularly affected as their livelihood depends on access to the very grazing land that these farms seek to control.