Fathi Nimer

Introduction “We’re all going to end up in Jordan,” remarked a young man from Al-Jiftlik, a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley. His comment reflects growing despair in the West Bank countryside, where Israeli settler-colonial expansion has intensified to unprecedented levels. This is particularly true in the Jordan Valley, the agricultural heartland along the West Bank’s eastern frontier with Jordan.

In the nineteenth century, European empires used Christian missions to legitimize their conquest of African lands, seize resources, and entrench cultural domination. Mission schools and churches spread Western values, undermined African traditions, and framed service to the empire as service to God. Within this broader imperial landscape, British evangelicals began advancing a political vision for Jewish resettlement in Palestine.