reshared from: https://jordanvalleysolidarity.org/news/tubas-locked-down-under-curfew/
Tubas town and surrounding villages were locked down under a brutal and violent curfew from Wednesday 25th to Saturday 29th November.
A military operation by occupation forces put Tubas and the surrounding towns of Tammun, Aqaba, Tayasir, and Wadi al-Fara under siege. On Wednesday, Israeli forces stormed wide areas of the governorate, including the nearby villages of al-Badhan and Talluza, isolating Tubas with roadblocks, earth mounds, and checkpoints.
Rashid Khudairi of Jordan Valley solidarity reported:
“Early in the morning of 25th November occupation forces closed all the checkpoints between Tubas and the northern Jordan Valley, preventing teachers, students, workers and farmers from travelling to work to school. By 5am the occupation forces invaded Tubas town, Al Fara’a, Tammun, Tayasir and Al Aqaba village. The main road between the town and villages was closed as they started a huge military operation in the area. The whole area has been placed under curfew. No-one can move between the town and villages, or even leave their own homes. Everything has been closed including the markets and the shops. Anyone attempting to venture out of their homes are being stopped and violently beaten by the occupation forces.”
Occupation soldiers entered the area with additional troops, bulldozers, and Apache helicopters, which opened fire in residential areas on anyone attempting to leave their homes. Throughout the area soldiers damaged infrastructure and cut electricity and water to several streets, occupied and converted multiple homes into military bases, expelled the families that resided within them.
Rashid reported:
“Occupation forces evicted two families from their homes in Tammun and six families from their homes in Tubas. They have occupied the houses and turned them into military bases. Military helicopters have been overhead shooting at anyone who leaves their home.”
As a total count, the army raided approximately 350 Palestinian homes and vandalized their contents.
Rashid reported: “A Palestinian from Tammun who was sick, in an ambulance taking him to hospital, was stopped for four hours by soldiers at the flying checkpoint between Tammun and Tubas town. He died, killed by the actions of the occupation.”
Over the course of the occupation’s aggression in Tubas governorate, medical teams treated more than 166 Palestinians who had been beaten by occupation forces – aproximately 60 of these were transferred to the hospital for treatment.
More than 200 detentions were recorded, most of whom were later released, while aproximately 70 remain in detention – held hostage by the occupation.
As journalists attempted to report from Tubas town they were pursued by the Israeli military and ordered to leave. On Thursday, a journalist and a photographer were arrested while they were reporting on the coloniser violence.
Israel claimed that the Tubas operation was intended to prevent the re-formation of armed resistance groups in the governorate, even though the Palestinian armed resistance is not active in the area.
It is clear that the real motivation for the wide-ranging an mass mobilization of military forces in Tubas area is to lay the groundwork for the confiscation large swathes of land for an upcoming settlement project. On 22nd November, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission reported that Israeli authorities had seized 1,042 dunams of Palestinian land in the northern Jordan Valley through nine ‘land seizure’ orders for ‘military purposes’.
As occupation forces withdrew on Saturday evening from the Tubas governorate, they left behind dozens of wounded and detained Palestinians, as well as widespread damage to infrastructure.