--- title: "In Fasayil, a Farmer’s Spring Becomes ‘Herod’s Pool’ and Israel Starts Building" description: "Smotrich says work has begun at a reservoir settlers filled in June with water from Saad Nemer’s land near Jericho" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-05T18:24:06Z modified: 2026-10-05T21:16:36Z url: https://rews.cc/a/in-fasayil-a-farmer-s-spring-becomes-herod-s-pool-and-israel-eeb35f language: en tags: ["water", "settlements", "archaeology", "palestine", "israel", "mideast"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # In Fasayil, a Farmer’s Spring Becomes ‘Herod’s Pool’ and Israel Starts Building *Smotrich says work has begun at a reservoir settlers filled in June with water from Saad Nemer’s land near Jericho* By Jan Sokol · October 5, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/in-fasayil-a-farmer-s-spring-becomes-herod-s-pool-and-israel-eeb35f ## In brief - Smotrich said on Sunday that development work had begun at ‘Herod’s Pool’ near Fasayil, north of Jericho in the occupied West Bank - In June settlers took farmer Saad Nemer’s irrigation pipeline and diverted his spring water into the ancient reservoir - Smotrich pledged more than 3 million shekels (almost $1m) for the site; ministers bathed in the pool - Archaeologists have not dated the pool, and Emek Shaveh says Herod’s name is used to ‘brand’ it as Jewish history - COGAT said the water was diverted ‘without authorisation’; Nemer says it was restored for only one day before being cut again In the Jordan Valley north of Jericho, beside the Palestinian village of Fasayil, a natural spring runs next to an old stone reservoir. Nobody can say who built the reservoir or when. Archaeologists have never studied it closely. Ruins nearby are thought to date from the first century BC. The settlers of neighbouring Petza’el have settled the question their own way. They call it Herod’s Pool. On Sunday the name moved a step closer to becoming official. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right settler, announced that “development and preservation” of the site had begun, and tied it to a wider effort to “strengthen \[Israel’s\] hold” on historical sites, \[Al Jazeera reported\](\). His social media post showed workers and wheelbarrows, with a caption: “The Settlement Revolution continues!” The water did not go back to Fasayil. The state is building around it instead. ## The pipe The land belongs to Saad Nemer, a farmer, and his family. Nemer says his grandfather bought it more than a century ago, and according to Al Jazeera, Israeli-issued documents and older title records reviewed by Reuters back him up. Research by Dror Etkes, who runs the settlement watchdog Kerem Navot, also found the land to be privately owned. Under agreements reached in the 1990s it lies in Area C, the part of the West Bank under full Israeli military control. In June, settlers began restoring the reservoir. Early that month Eliav Libi, a settler leader who has been sanctioned by Canada and other countries, posted a video of the pool starting to fill, \[according to reporting carried by the Times of Israel\](\). The water came from Nemer’s spring. Settlers took his irrigation pipeline, cut the supply to his fields and ran it into the ancient basin. His land normally grows eggplants, zucchini and watermelons. That season Nemer, 69, could plant nothing. He describes his farmland as scorched and his greenhouses as empty. He says settlers threatened him and beat one of his employees. ## Ministers in the water For a while that summer the reservoir drew Israeli visitors who came to swim and picnic. Ministers promised to turn it into a “Garden of Eden”, a phrase that rews followed as [settlers took the West Bank’s springs](https://rews.cc/a/the-garden-of-eden-diverted-settlers-take-the-west-bank-s-sp-82e71a). Knesset member Zvi Sukkot and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu were photographed cooling off in the water that used to reach Nemer’s crops. Smotrich pledged more than three million shekels, almost $1m, to develop the site. The sequence matters. First the water was taken. Then lawmakers bathed in it. Then the treasury paid for it. Sunday’s announcement adds the builders. This is how a fact on the ground gets made, if one may reflect on it. Power rarely signs the first act. It waits, then turns up with funding, a plaque and a story about where the place came from. ## A king’s name The story here is Herod’s. Alon Arad, executive director of the Israeli group Emek Shaveh, which opposes the political use of archaeology, told Reuters the pool’s origins are unclear. “We see in many cases the use of archaeology … to create this feeling that the West Bank is exclusively Jewish,” he said. Naming the pool after Herod, he argued, was a way to “brand” it as part of Jewish history, \[as the AP report put it\](\). Herod the Great turns up again and again in Israeli heritage projects across the territory Israel calls Judea and Samaria. Herodium, the hilltop south of Jerusalem said to hold the ruins of his fortress, has run for decades as an Israeli national park despite Palestinian protests. In Sebastia, ancient Samaria, Israel has poured money into excavations since 2023 to build another national park. Eliyahu, who lives in a West Bank settlement, said it would be “first and foremost a Jewish heritage site”, and his office cited “the magnificent Roman city built by King Herod.” In Hebron, where part of the Ibrahimi Mosque is believed to date from the Herodian era, Israel has repeatedly restricted Muslim access. When UNESCO moved in 2017 to recognise the Old City as a Palestinian heritage site, Yishai Fleisher, a settler and former adviser to Itamar Ben-Gvir, objected that it was “built by a Jewish king.” An old king is useful to the living. He cannot be cross-examined, and his name carries weight that a land registry lacks. The water follows the same logic. Israeli politicians and settlers have also pushed for more control over Solomon’s Pools, three reservoirs in Bethlehem governorate. B’Tselem places Fasayil within the broader drive to take over heritage sites in the West Bank. Palestinians, Al Jazeera notes, see the targeting of their water as part of a plan to take the territory’s resources and push them off the land. In the Jordan Valley, where agriculture lives or dies by irrigation, a cut pipe does the work of an eviction order without anyone having to issue one. ## One day of water The Israeli state has not denied what happened. COGAT, the military body that runs civil affairs in the West Bank, acknowledged the water was diverted “without authorisation” and said it would investigate. The Civil Administration has acknowledged that the spring is Nemer’s. Nemer told The New York Times that COGAT promised to restore his water. It flowed for one day. Then it was cut again. He now fears that if he reconnects his own pipeline, settlers will come for him. So the water stays in the reservoir, where the work began on Sunday.