The Qader familyAt 8am on Monday May 30, eight Israeli jeeps and two bulldozers destroyed two Bedouin “barracks” (shacks) in the village of Arab Abu Farda, south of Qalqilya. One of the barracks belonged to Abdul Qader and was home to 12 people and the other housed cows which belonged to his neighbor. According to Abdul Qader, the Israeli army came without warning, gave the family no opportunity to take out their belongings, (not even anything for the children) and used unnecessary force and aggression with them.
Abdul Qader lives with his wife and his eight children, the eldest being 13 years old, the youngest being one year old, plus two female cousins. They are agricultural people, who work with sheep. The barrack had no running water and no electricity; the family used a motor for electricity and had to buy very expensive water tanks to enable them to have water for them and their animals. They have lived like this for many years. Qader´s wife told ISM that one of her children had asked her: “Why do we live like this, we have no electricity, no water, no school”. And she has always tried to find an answer for her children. Now she has no answer for them when they ask why they have no house. They were struggling to find a place to stay for the night and repeatedly said “Where are my children going to sleep tonight?”The Qader family's home after demolition
Arab Abu Farda is a small Bedouin village with approximately 75 inhabitants in the south of Qalqilya, but it is located on the other side of the separation barrier, which makes it isolated from the West Bank.
On Friday, May 6, the Israeli military declared the area of Amniyr, a Palestinian village south of Yatta, a closed military zone and chased away the families who own the land, after demolishing structures and trees on the land the day before. The demolitions at 5 a.m. on Thursday, May 5, when the military destroyed six shacks and uprooted 150 olive trees in Amniyr.
On Friday, the Palestinians of Amniyr had returned to the land and hung six tarps to create makeshift tents. The Israeli army issued a “closed military zone” order on the area at 9:00 a.m. At 2:00 p.m. seven military jeeps arrived, including police and border police. The commanders showed the order and gave the people one minute to leave.
Using sound bombs and tear gas, the soldiers and police forced off the land all the Palestinians present—about thirty adults, many of them elderly, and ten children—as well as accompanying internationals. One woman, Fatmi Mahmoud Jaboor, passed out due to the bombs and required medical attention. The Palestinian Red Cross evacuated her to the hospital, and she was dismissed in the evening.
Household belongings scattered after demolition
Soldiers threaten Palestinians with sound bomb
At 7 p.m. four military jeeps returned to Amniyr and destroyed the tarps and what had been left standing in the area.
This is the third time in ten weeks that the military has destroyed trees, tents, dwellings and other structures on the land of Amniyr, effectively demolishing the entire village and affecting six families. Although Amniyr is Palestinian-owned private property, Israel has declared it “state land” and prohibits the people of Amniyr from building any structures or using the land. A local Palestinian leader has told CPT that he believes Israel is trying to confiscate the land of Amniyr because of its proximity to the Israeli settlement of Susiya.
Operation Dove and Christian Peacemaker Teams have maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and South Hebron Hills since 2004. Follow breaking news from the South Hebron hills on Twitter at cptpalestine.
Women of the Bedouin herding hamlet of Khirbet Amniyr sat on the earth and watched Israeli forces demolish their 12 tent homes for the third time on Thursday morning. The women said they were waiting for the soldiers to leave so they could rebuild their tent homes and once again re-establish their lives and livlihoods.
Amniyr, south of Yatta in the southern West Bank, is said to be located in an Israeli military zone. Military zoning laws enforced by Israel’s Civil Administration, make up part of the 60 percent of the West Bank that is inaccessible to Palestinians.
As the troops left, the woman remained seated, surveying the destruction, as their tents and mattresses lay buried under a thin layer of dirt.
“I appeal to God to save us from the cruelty of the Israeli occupation,” said the hamlet’s matriarch, as she stood and began to collect her belongings from under the dust.
The hamlet has been taken down twice before, first on February 22 when the Israeli military buried homes and water wells, later preventing ICRC workers from delivering aid equipment. On March 29, seven Bedouin were beaten by Israeli border police when the same 12 tents were taken down a second time.
The 12 families of Khirbet Amniyr were ordered out of their tent homes earlier in the year, but remained, saying they had little choice but to stay and had nowhere else to go.
The spokesman of Israel’s Civil Administration could not be reached by phone for comment on the latest demolition.
Amniyr is one of three Bedouin hamlets currently under Israeli evacuation orders, with a second in the south Hebron hills area, and a third in the northern West Bank district of Nablus which has been demolished six times. In Israel’s Negev region, the Bedouin community in Al-Araqib have seen their homes taken down a total of 16 times, to make way for a park.
The cluster of Jordan Valley villages located around Fasayil offer a twisted microcosm of the fickle barbarity of Israel’s illegal occupation. Families who seemingly share land, live side by side with no separation except the invisible borders enshrined in Israel’s military law. Yet, as you tread amongst the stones between the close lying villages it is clear where the limited rights afforded to Palestinians ends and the increased terror of the occupation begins.
To the south lies Fasayil, which is classified as Area B under the misleadingly named Oslo Peace Accords. Because of the status afforded to it by the 1994 treaty, villagers are entitled to build schools and houses, as well as run water and electricity to their homes. Life is by no means perfect, and the Palestinians who live there are still deeply affected by Israel’s occupation. Yet, being in Area B does afford them a limited right to education and healthcare.
Just under five kilometres to the north is the village of Fasayil al-Fauqa, classified as Area C under Oslo. In 2008, after a project by Jordan Valley Solidarity to build a school, Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair negotiated a special status for Palestinians living there. All solid structures built since the signing of the 1994 Oslo agreement were allowed to stand, despite being ‘illegal’ under Israel’s punishing military law. Yet Fasayil al-Fauqa is still Area C, and these small gains can be cruelly taken away at any time the occupation decides.
Nestled between the two, Fasayal Al Wusta is home to a small community of Bedouin, many of whom travelled to the area from Bethlehem during the late 1980s and 90s following harassment by the army. Fasayal Al Wusta lies in Area C, and it’s inhabitants are thus denied the basic necessities afforded to their neighbours in Area B. This includes water, and electricity from the power lines that criss cross above their homes to Area B and the surrounding agricultural colonies (settlements) of Tomer and El’Fasail.
As a further affront to their human rights, the Bedouin must watch as families a few hundred metres away in Area B receive rice and cooking oil from USAID, and American boxes litter the bumpy road that connects the villages. The only benefit for one family is a cardboard box serving as a makeshift toy box, emblazoned with a ‘gift from the American people’. Now the little these families have is under threat from demolition orders served by the Israeli Occupational Force (IOF).
At any time these men, women and children – some as young as 2 months – could be woken, perhaps at 5am, to the sound of confrontational soldiers barking orders that they leave their home. Then, without even a minutes respite to collect their belongings, they may have to watch as a bulldozer and it’s emotionless driver proceed to destroy what has taken years to build. Over the weekend of 15th-17th April the army came to the village, taking photographs of the condemned tents and their occupants. It is feared the bulldozers will come when the weekend passes.
Bedouins in the Jordan Valley
The demolition orders were served at the beginning of March by a court in Bet El military base, just outside Ramallah. As the Bedouin carry a Jordan Valley identity card they are all but denied the right to defend their homes, as entry into other areas of the West Bank can be a lengthy process. Whilst a lawyer represented the families, he could only gleam a one month stay of execution. That brief period expired on the 9th and 10th of April.
It is difficult for the Bedouin to leave Fasayal Al Wusta because the men have jobs in the area, the majority earning 50 shekels (£10) a day picking fruit and vegetables in the fields of Tomer settlement. The produce, ranging from bananas to aubergines and dates, are then packaged and shipped to Europe, Israel and the Middle East. Whilst grown on Palestinian land, stolen in 1948 and approved by the international community under Oslo, profits are for Israeli’s only.
Now the families fall to sleep at night uncertain of what the next twenty four hours may bring. In a show of strength and resilience, they sit and watch TV amongst belongings that could lie flattened and unrepairable come morning. Maybe the bulldozers will arrive by daylight, maybe they will never come. It is an agonising wait, and an integral element of the psychological war being waged against Palestinians across the West Bank. And on this stretch of land spanning the eastern part of the Occupied Territories the suffering is rapidly intensifying.
In the Israeli state’s drive to ethnically cleanse the fertile land of all Palestinians, the Bedouin of the Jordan Valley suffer constant harassment that extends beyond house demolitions. In February, the Israeli Boarder Police descended upon Fasayal Al Wusta at 1am with megaphones and aggression. They demanded that every man in the village over the age of 15 years had five minutes to make their way to the playground a short walk away in Fasayil. The men were detained for an hour, and it was claimed that the Police chief had a problem with the amount of stones in the road.
A month earlier, two brothers were arrested and taken to Ofar prison near Ramallah again on a spurious charge that the Police chief had taken a dislike to large stones in the street. They were released after two days, but without their identity cards – meaning they couldn’t travel or work. Yet, they had to make the trip back to Fayasal Al Wusta. In order to return home it was essential they avoided Israeli checkpoints, as they would be arrested again. So they took a treacherous trip across mountainous back roads in a private taxi. The cost of the journey was 300 shekels, and each brother had to pay a further 1,000 shekels for a new identity card from the Palestinian Authority. In the three week period it took to receive the cards neither brother was able to earn even a shekel.
These payments are part of a wider economic squeeze on the already poverty stricken Bedouin, which include bail payments for arrested animals and fines if sheep or cattle wander over to the wrong side of a road. It seems the Israeli’s are becoming tired with the capacity of Bedouin families to restart their lives following each demolition. With one tent destroyed, they move a little further across the land and rebuild again. If Israel can bankrupt them, perhaps they will get the Zionist message they are not welcome on their own land. Or, if the international community can get it’s act together, maybe Israel can be told it has to end it’s apartheid laws and hand the Jordan Valley back to the Palestinians.
Al SamraOn April 7th at 6 am the village of Al Aqaba woke up to find the Israeli Army destroying thier road and two homes. Two Caterpillar bulldozers were with the military jeeps. They demolished two concrete houses leaving two families homeless, one with 11 children, and the other with 7 children. Their animal shelters had also been destroyed.
They also destroyed about 2.5km of tarmac road that wound around the hills of the village, and the electricity columns which serve energy to the inhabitants. One of the roads is ironically named Peace Street and is a vital link with the Jordan Valley.The bulldozers also created mounds with the rubble along the road to make it impossible for any vehicle to drive along it.
95% of Al Aqaba, which is in area C, received demolition orders from the Occupation Authority in 2006. Since then they have been mounting a legal challenge, but it is apparent that the occupation army does not wish to wait for their own Israeli `law`.
700 people were forced out of their land in 2006, but the entire village was granted a freeze on their demolition orders until the end of 2011 to give the opportunity to resolve the situation peacefully. Background information about the village is available on their own website.
In the afternoon of 7th April the army also demolished three large animal shelters and a kitchen in the farming community of Al Samra in the northern Jordan Valley. Jordan Valley Solidarity arrived just after the demolitions to find the families devastated, and the grandparents visibly upset.They received demolition orders for the third time on Tuesday 29th March, and were given just three days to destroy their own buildings, making it virtually impossible for them to make an appeal through the courts. When the army did not demolish their buildings straight away they became hopeful that they would be able to get a freeze on the demolition order, but their hopes were destroyed today.
The grandmother was crying at the sight of the destruction, and that the sheep and goats were now out in the afternoon sun without any shade. The animals were all crowding under the tractors and water tanks to try to find their own shade. As well as the animal shelters, the army also destroyed the small kitchen of a family with a young baby, aged just 20 days old.
