Valley of Grief

For the last month our TV screens and newspapers have been filled with reports of Israel’s massacre of the people of Gaza. The bloodshed and brutality have caused outrage across the world and calls for international actions to hold Israel to account are growing. Whilst this is going on, the people on the other side of Palestine continue their struggle in relative silence against the gradual ethnic cleansing of their land.

The Jordan Valley is located in the North East of Palestine and comprises 28.5% of the West Bank. Ever since the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, Israel has attempted to annex the area for its own political, military and economical gain. By now, 44% of the land is controlled by the Israeli army and 50% by the 36 illegal settlements in the Valley, leaving the indigenous Palestinians in charge of a mere 6% of their land. Many people who have been able to stay in their homes are more or less segregated from their countrymen in the West Bank as no Palestinian can exit or enter the area without a special permit issued only by the occupation authorities.

With its water resources, fertile land and warm weather the Jordan Valley is perfect for agricultural production. As you drive through the stunning landscape of the Valley, you are frequently confronted with big settlement owned farms and packing houses which have been erected on land confiscated from the local population. Biggest of them all are the ones belonging to half Israeli state owned Carmel Agrexco. Through their contracts with the settlers, they grow flowers, vegetables, herbs and fruit on an industrial scale for export to Europe and other parts of the world. Agrexco have proudly stated that their produce can reach Europe within 24 hours of being picked. A Palestinian farmer will struggle to get theirs to Jericho or Nablus.

A visit to the villages in the Jordan Valley crystallises exactly how cold hearted and systematic the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is. With continuing settlement expansion, no village is free from their impact. In every house you can find someone who can point you to a piece of land which used to belong to their family but which is now part of a surrounding settlement. More often than not, some villagers are forced to go to work for the settlers themselves. In Ein El Beida, a man called Yusif provides a vivid picture of how their lives are affected by the occupation. His father used to own a big farm just outside the village, but since 1967 the Mehola settlement has gradually taken over 70% of Ein El Beida’s land, including his father’s farm. The family now has to rent a piece of land for 60,000 shekels a year in order to continue farming. As Yusif takes the risk of driving through the Mehola gates to show me where their land used to be, their loss becomes clear: on one side there is a huge, lush banana farm, whilst just next to it, on the other side of the fence, you can see some fragile rows of brown, brittle fruit trees –the land that now belongs to the village. “We used to have several of our own water wells”, I am told, “but Mekorot came in and dug deeper wells so they all dried out. We now have to buy the water back from them”. Makorot is Israel’s National Water Company. This is a story I will hear again and again.

Theoretically, Ein El Beida is one of the luckier villages. They were allocated “Area B” status according to the Oslo accords, which means that they are allowed to repair their houses and carry out restricted building while the Palestinian Authority practice civilian, if not military, control of the area. Most of the Jordan Valley is in Area C, where no such rights exist. In the minds of people living there, there is no doubt that they are in the process of being ethnically “cleansed” out of their ancestral homes: “it is obvious”, says Harab who lives with 10 other families in the Hamsa area just 200 meters from the notorious Hamra checkpoint, “the Israelis want to empty the land of people so that they can take it. There used to be 40 families living here, but now we are only 10”. Harab has recently had his simple home demolished and holds up further documents for inspection: demolition orders for the animal shacks. Like Ein El Beida this area used to have their own water supply, but they are now forced to buy water from the other side of the checkpoint –a risky business as two of the village’s water tanks and a tractor were confiscated by the army last autumn. To get them back Harab has been told that he will have to pay 12,000 shekels and sign a paper agreeing to him and his family leaving the land.

During the latest Gaza atrocity, the Israelis have again and again highlighted that they are no longer technically occupying Gaza as they withdrew their settlers from the area as a gesture of “goodwill” in 2005. If anyone wonders what happened to those settlers the Jordan Valley has the answer. Maskiot, the first new settlement to be approved by Israel for a decade is located in the Valley, next to the Bedouin community of El Maleh and they are already causing the Palestinians grief. “It is as if all the mad Israelis have been put together in Maskiot” says a man who wants to remain anonymous. Even before Maskiot, El Maleh had the settlement Rotem on their doorstep and they are now more or less surrounded. They have received demolition orders on their animal shed and their sheep keep getting stolen by the settlers when they try to graze them in the surrounding hills. ”I have called the Israeli police”, says the man,”but the only answer I get is that the Maskiot settlers are above the law”.

For each village visited here, there are tens of others like them. Like Al Hadidya, where families have had their houses demolished eight times in the last twelve years, or Al Farisiya where the farmers struggle on despite having all their water pipes cut. Those places only exist through the sheer determination of the communities not to be moved from their land. If anyone doubts the urgency of this battle let me end with the harsh words of the soldier on the checkpoint as I was leaving the area and re-entering the ”real” West Bank: ”Goodbye and hope you enjoyed your time in Israel”. In the Israeli mind these places are already gone.