Tag: Tubas

Jordan Valley Isolated

by Jamil Husni,

After having finished a hard-working day in the area, three Palestinian Water Authority employees reached al-Hamra checkpoint in the Jordan Valley, on their way to Ramallah. The Israeli army refused to let them through, claiming that their permits are for West Bank checkpoints only.

Othman Sheikha, the wells’ observer in the West Bank said of his arguement with an Israeli soldier: “He demanded special permits to enter the Jordan Valley, other than the permits we have.”

His colleague, who seemed to be less nervous than him said “in order to reach a village or agricultural area in the Jordan Valley, you have to prove to the Israeli army that you are not a West Bank resident.”

He added: “Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley are one issue,” referring to Israeli intentions to dominate these two vital areas.

Israel prevents all West Bank residents from entering the Jordan Valley under security pretexts. This is a real yet unofficial Israeli policy implemented by the army in an area they call the eastern isolation area.

“The next goal for Israel is the Jordan Valley or 30% of the West Bank. There are procedures that Israel does in secret and in public to annex the Jordan Valley and to isolate it from the rest of the West Bank” says Hami al-Masri, a political analyst.

Issa Zboon, director of Geographic Information Systems Unit in the Applied Researches Institute (Areej), said that the area of the eastern isolated zone, from the eastern mountains to the Jordan River, is about 1555 km². According to him, Israel has in effect completed its isolation of the Jordan Valley at the beginning of last year. Even before that, all West Bank residents were forbidden to enter the area due to a law commonly known as the “Identity Law”.

This law, which is enforced by Israeli soldiers at all checkpoints surrounding the isolation zone, forbids non-residents of the Jordan Valley from entering the isolation zone. The soldiers would check the ID card of each passenger to make sure non-residents stayed out, hence the name of this effective policy.

Israel has never issued such a law officially, and always claimed that the procedures in the Jordan Valley are security procedures and not politically motivated. Practically one third of the West Bank is out of bounds for Palestinians.

Zboon said the isolated zone constitutes 27% of the West Bank area, which totals 5561km². Another 10% of the West Bank is in the western isolation zone, behind the wall. The link between the eastern and the western isolation zones, which the Israeli government is trying to establish, is a strip of land taking up to 6% of the West Bank.

“This is stated in the Kadima project about unilateral disengagement and drawing final borders of Israel within 10 years.” Zboon clarified.

“Israel is not wasting time creating facts on the ground, thus making negotiations impossible.”

The checkpoints of the Jordan Valley are so impressive and thorough it gives the impression of crossing the Green line. They are very similar to those on border crossings between countries.

Dr. Ayman Daraghmeh, a PLC member from Tubas, said what Israel doing in the Jordan Valley area has “obvious political goals.”

“There is no Palestinian state without the Jordan Valley borders and real geographic continuity,” said al-Masri.

Palestinians depend on the Jordan Valley for their food and water. The area underwent during the initial years of the Israeli occupation a massive settlement campaign, termed by occupation authorities the “Israeli agricultural settlement”.

PNN: “Displaced from Aqaba as Israeli forces confiscate Jordan Valley village”

by Ali Samoudi, January 28th

The President of the Aqaba Village Council says the small community in the Jordan Valley is facing a new scheme which includes demolishing the village mosque, kindergarten, clinic and rural women’s center. Israeli forces issued 19 more demolition orders for houses and organizations that will replace Aqaba with military installations.

Council President, Sami Sadiq, told PNN that the features of a massive takeover became apparent at the beginning of the month.

He did say, however, that residents were “patient at first, simply watching and waiting as they had become accustomed to arbitrary actions.”

He said that the trouble began when the Israeli government decided to build the Wall on village lands. “They took vast areas and demolished many houses and buildings in the village, destroyed much of the water supply, and agricultural lands. When they demolished Ahmed Mahmoud Ali’s house they used the pretext of ‘security,’ which is the argument frequently employed to explain the policies of occupation.”

Sadiq said, “There is no international law that provides for the destruction of educational facilities for children or a mosque devoted to worship, or even a health center. What is the relationship between security and these centers? How can citizens live without the provision of vital services?”

The Village Council President answered his own question. “That’s just it, they can’t.”

Occupation Police Benevolence in the Jordan Valley

by Peter, January 25th

Recently, I was able to accompany three Palestinians on a drive through the Jordan Valley. The more scenic aspects aside, a trip through the area revealed the slow, destructive siege of the Valley.

Movement restrictions have effectively sealed off the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank. For example, the north of the Jordan Valley in the Tubas region (a two hour drive at minimum from Ramallah) should be 15 minutes from Nablus. However, the Occupation has restricted Palestinian access to this area to those registered in the villages of the Valley; to reach the northern West Bank from the north of the Valley without Jordan Valley ID one must travel down to Ramallah before heading north. This effectively makes what should be a short trip into a day of driving, 8 hours being a conservative estimate, accompanied by an equivalent rise in the cost of petrol. To put things in a more concrete perspective, our own trip from Ramallah to the north of the Valley and back cost around NIS 150 in petrol.

Additionally, harassment of Palestinians at the hands of soldiers and police occurs on a regular basis. “Heightened surveillance” signs mark much of the highway running from Jericho to the the north. Palestinians will be pulled over for driving too quickly (or too slowly) and detained under a number of pretexts. Not only does this further restrict movement, but also it often proves to be very expensive. On our drive, we were pulled over by Occupation police. After being detained for a half hour, we were issued a fine of NIS 250 for not “driving quietly” and failing to wear seatbelts. The driver of our vehicle informed the police that we were in fact all wearing our seatbelts (“driving quietly” is a bit harder to contest, as it makes little logical sense), but this complaint was ignored. Instead, the police informed us that they were in fact exercising restraint; in their benevolence they had only fined us NIS 250 as opposed to a more drastic fine of NIS 1000.

Thus, a day drive into the Jordan Valley cost NIS 400. Compare this with the average income of a family in the valley (NIS 1000 per month), and it should become quite clear that movement is financially impossible for most of the Palestinians trapped in the valley.

Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians Continues in Jordan Valley

by the ISM media team, January 25th

On Tuesday 23rd January IOF bulldozers carried out the latest round of home demolitions in the Jordan Valley as part of the ongoing attempt to ethnically cleanse the valley of its indigenous inhabitants.

Six Palestinian homes were destroyed in Al Jiftlik Village, and one home and a reservoir were demolished in the neighbouring village of Furush Beit Dajan. Both villages are located in the middle of the valley near Hamra checkpoint. Around 50 people were made homeless by these demolitions. The homes demolished were shacks constructed out of pieces of wood and metal. Palestinians in the valley as elsewhere in Zone C are never given permission to build houses so erect makeshift homes, knowing they will be demolished at some point. The owners of the demolished homes are:

Bashar Mubarak Yusif Basharat
Basem Mohammed Saleh Musaid
Ali Salim Ahmed Jahalin
Mohammed Hasan Eid Ghaneym
Mohammed Aleyan
Ali Qaibni Ghaneym
Yusif Ibrahim Abu Awad
Yusif Sadiq Shaheen

demolished shacks in Al Jiftlik:

the demolished shack and reservoir in Furush Beit Dajan:

life in the valley:


water tanks for Palestinians with reservoir for the illegal Israeli colony in the background


pump for illegal Israeli colony

Haaretz: “Checkpoint comradeship”

by Amira Hass, January 24th

Anyone who wants to become acquainted with Israeli society should go to the checkpoints. Not for a quarter of an hour, under the guidance of commanders who will glory in the pavilion they built for the people waiting in line and will explain that the upgrading and the expansion of the checkpoint are intended to benefit the locals. Those who really want to know the checkpoints should rather dwell here for hours, during several days. When you observe the soldiers, you will discover many Israeli characteristics among them, characteristics in which we have always taken pride.

Comradeship, for example. The comradeship is so strong that there are those who feel they can even deviate from the norms that have been created at the checkpoint, which are perverted in any case. At the Taysir checkpoint, for example, in two cases documented during the past two weeks, a soldier urinated in public, and in the presence of women. Perhaps it was the same soldier both times, or perhaps two different soldiers. This was but an extreme manifestation of the scorn the soldiers at the checkpoint demonstrate for the people who are at their mercy and must pass through there – teachers, farmers, merchants, schoolchildren, workers at the settlements. But this is also an expression of the soldiers’ self-confidence, of the knowledge that none of their comrades will prevent them from doing things they would not do in Binyamina or Bnei Brak.

The willingness to help is also an Israeli trait. The very same soldier helped a policeman ensconced in his jeep at this remote checkpoint, located at the end of the Jordan Valley. On Tuesday last week, this soldier collected the identity cards of a number of drivers, gave them to the policeman in the jeep and returned to the drivers with the ID cards and with traffic violation tickets and a payment of a fine of NIS 100 each, which they would have to pay for the benefit of the state treasury, for not wearing seat belts. And incidentally, they were wearing seat belts, although their cars had already been waiting for half an hour or more.

Inventiveness is another blessed Israeli trait. A military order prohibits all Palestinians from entering and sojourning in the Jordan Valley, except for those who live there and work for the most part at Jewish settlements. In recent weeks, the soldiers at the Taysir checkpoint have told inhabitants of the Jordan Valley who “dared” to spend the night outside the valley and return to it in the morning that “this is forbidden.” A year and a half ago they decided that it was “forbidden” for farmers to bring their produce through this checkpoint – as a result, these farmers had to make a detour of about 30 kilometers and pass through a different checkpoint. When it was made clear to the soldiers that there was no such order, they found a method to keep drivers away from the checkpoint: They obligated those who transport vegetables into the West Bank to unload all crates before the checkpoint, supposedly for inspection, and to reload them.

Tenacity is also considered to be an admirable trait, especially in the army. Brigade commanders come and go, soldiers are replaced and yet, during the past two years, the reports about the distant Taysir checkpoint have remained the same: soldiers who invent harassments, waiting times way beyond what is justified, on various false excuses (one time it is construction work at the checkpoint, another time forged documents and yet another time a security warning), and reports of people who were made to pass through a different checkpoint.

It is easy to claim that Taysir is exceptional. It is a fact that the reported behavior of that particular soldier was seen by his commanders as very grave, and he was suspended from his position. The brigade also denied the veracity of reports by inhabitants that the specific soldier was present and “served” at the checkpoint even after he was suspended for about two hours on one day and three hours on another. Brigade officials stressed that the suspension of this soldier is still in force, with the same assertiveness as those people who said they had seen him again at the checkpoint. In any case, in the past, too, after this kind of information was brought to the attention of the commanders, the situation at the checkpoint improved for several days and the waiting time was shorter, and then everything returned to the status quo ante. Each of the many dozens of checkpoints has developed its own methods of harassment over the years. They derive from the implicit order behind the existence of every checkpoint: Prevent Palestinian freedom of movement for the sake of the welfare of the Jewish settlements; that is to say – Israel. One gets sick of reading about the checkpoints. One gets even sicker of writing about them. And the most sickening thing of all is to pass through them. But because the Palestinians have no alternative but to continue to pass through them, these checkpoints will continue to be the representatives of Israeli society.