Early Wednesday morning Palestine solidarity activists blockaded the Israeli company Carmel Agrexco’s British headquarters. This was part of a non-violent protest against recurrent breaches of human rights and international law in the Israeli occupied territories of Palestine.
Carmel is complicit in war crimes under the International Criminal Court Act 2001 (ICC Act). They import fresh produce originating from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.
The action follows a legal warning letter to Carmel stating clearly why they are in breach of the law.
The action took place at Agrexco UK, Swallowfield Way, Hayes, Middlesex, Israel’s largest importer of agricultural produce into the European Union. It is 50% Israeli state owned.
Protestors used wire fencing and bicycle D-Locks in a well planned blockade at the two entrances to the building.
Before taking part in the blockade, many of the protesters had witnessed first hand the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation.
This follows on from an action of 11th November 2004, when seven Palestine-Solidarity protesters from London and Brighton were arrested after taking part in a non-violent blockade outside the same company.
Last September a Judge ruled that Agrexco (UK) must prove that their business is lawful. The acquittal of the seven activists before they were able to present their defence meant that the court did not have to rule on the legalityof Agrexco-Carmel’s involvement in the supply of produce from illegal settlements in the occupied territories.
Today’s blockade aims to draw attention to this company’s complicity, in murder, theft and damage of occupied land, collective punishment, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and other breaches of International Law.
11th July: Near the villages of Az-Zubeidat and Marj Na’ja is the farm of Abu Rhader, 49 years old. ISM activists met with the farmer, as well as his neighbor, Abu Jamal, 48 years old. Abu Jamal is one of many teachers and civil employees to be left unpaid for five months following the US-led economic sanctions pressuring the new Palestinian government.
Basem Ahmed Abu Rhader was born in Tobas, and his lifetime has seen twenty-nine Israeli settlements built in the Jordan Valley, while life for farmers is put under ever greater pressure. He is one of the last significant landowners, his peers having been gradually “persuaded” to surrender their land, while settlements grow verdant orchards on all sides. While these colonies grow, Abu Rhader is prohibited from making the simplest renovations, let alone new buildings. His farm is located 400m inside the 1967 borders of the “green line.”
As well as annexing land, the Israeli authorities use other means to pressurize his operation. He is an able businessman, and he knows that he cannot grow more than he can sell in the West Bank or in Israel. However, the long journeys inflicted by checkpoints and terminal closures mean that his produce may simply rot before it can be sold. He has no access to processing plants that could make the produce more long-lived or marketable. If the produce reaches Israel, he may yet be charged 200 NIS for the pleasure of being told it is unsuitable to sell, which is an insult to any farmer.
This means that many of his green houses stand empty and fruits rot on the plant, because it would cost too much to produce at full capacity. Abu Rhader grows numerous types of vegetable and some citrus fruits. Soon he will begin harvesting his corn. How much will be able to reach markets remains uncertain.
In the historically fertile land of the Jordan Valley, this predicament is not only one for the landowners, but for whole communities. Abu Rhader has been losing approximately $1,000,000 per annum for four consecutive years. Thus, where he once regularly employed fifty to sixty workers, now he retains between seven and ten only. He cannot offer homes to workers or their families, and those that come must be able to afford to come by road. As with so much of Palestinian life, the occupation is straining agricultural society to its limits.
As well as economically strangling the farms, the Israeli military is also guilty of general harassment and intimidation, which they conduct with impunity. He gave this example: an Israeli bulldozer may appear one day and destroy a tract of land, destroying $1,000 worth of crops. He has the option of suing for compensation, but legal representation would likely exceed $10,000.
From the roof of his farm building we surveyed the tracts of empty land. Abu Rhader’s son is studying Human Rights Law in Sydney, Australia. He will perhaps be well-equipped to write his dissertation on some of its failures.
The Jordan Valley: Background Information
The Jordan Valley region starts north of the Dead Sea going north all the way to the city of Bisan and is surrounded by the east by the Jordan River and on the west by the mountain ranges of the West Bank.
“The only logical and obvious source of water for the residents of the Jordan Valley is the Jordan River, but it has become virtually impossible for the residents to reach this source of water due to the electric fence that blocks most of the river from Palestinian residents (Green, Lena; Apartheid and Agrexco in the Jordan Valley; The Electronic Intifada).”
In order to finalize the annexation of the Valley, Israel has invested $24 million for “development” in 2004 and 2005, with a further $19 million slated for 2006 to 2008. Of the 2,400 km2 of land in the Valley, 455.7 km2 is considered “closed military areas,” 1655.5 km2 will be controlled by settlements, and 243 km2 has been confiscated along the border with Jordan, This leaves only 45 km2 for Palestinians (Juma, Jamal; The Eastern Wall, Closing the Circle of Our Ghettoization).
Plans for the eastern section of the Wall to run through the Jordan Valley will isolate over 20 villages while additional barriers will encircle Jericho into an isolated prison. Thirty kilometers of the 45 km stretch from Salem to Taysir are currently under construction. The Ministry of Defense states that this section will be completed by the end of this year.
The eastern wall will lead to a complete encirclement of Palestinian land – and the effective creation of three Bantustan areas
Orit Arzieli, head of the Jordan Valley “communities board”, said Israel may be limiting the expansion of the Palestinian communities in the area: “This is true, they should not be here. There is a constant trickling of Arabs from Nablus who want to populate the valley,” she told AFP. “The Jordan Valley must stay under Israeli control.”
At Al Quds Open University Campus in Tubas we met Raed and Firas, aged 22 and 21 yrs old. They both work in the fields and packing houses of the Jordan Valley settlements to be able to survive and pay for their education. On the days that they work, they get up at 3.00am, to be bussed through the mountains and checkpoints to the Jordan Velley settlements with about 500 settlement workers from the town. They are able to do this as they have a permit to enter the Jordan Valley supplied by the Israeli settler they are working for. They work from 6.00am – 2.00pm, and for this they receive less than 5 pounds ($9.00) per day.
Raed works in Beit Ariva Settlement near Jericho. Even with a Jordan Valley permit he never knows if he will be allowed through the checkpoint at Humra or not. He is frequently searched and two weeks ago was just turned back for no reason. He picks and packs tomatoes, grapes, chilli peppers and other fruit and vegetables for Carmel Agrexco – the largest Israeli exporter to the UK. All the workers there are Palestinian or Thai – they are told not to talk to each other and have no common language that enables them to do so. The settlers are always armed, and they see them only when they are giving them work instructions.
Faed and Firas were happy for us to film them and report the information they gave us. I checked this with them carefully for fear that they could loose their jobs or face other repercussions. Faed’s response was “What else can they do to us?”
Firas is on the Student Council at the Al Quds Open University in Tubas, which was set up in 2001 to enable students to attend university without having to pass through numerous checkpoints. Students work from home, or come to the campus when they are able to. We met with the student council and they told us that 7 students from the University have been killed by the Israeli Army and 35 arrested – one of which was a girl.
Of 1,500 students, 230 come from the Jordan Valley. They are often stopped of delayed at the checkpoints on their way to the University, and this becomes far worse at exam time.
In 2001, the Army came into the University and caused a lot of damage inside the building, and they often block the gate to the University and stop the students from getting in. This last happened 5 days before our visit.
This Univsity is desperately short of money and has no library. They are looking for another acedemic institution to sponsor a subscription to an online library, as this is the only way many of the students could get access to the books they need.
At the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Tubas we heard about the impact of the occupation, the checkpoints, and the road blocks on the ambulance staff. When we heard that ambulance staff had been made to walk on the bodies of dead people by the Israeli Army we didn’t want to believe it, but it was clearly true.
Tubas is a town of 24,000 people. It is in the west of Tubas region, which covers an area aproximately 24km accross and 28km north to south. Most of the Tubas region is in the Jordan Valley and only accessible by via checkpoints.
In 1999, the PRCS (an NGO) was set up in Tubas. They have the only ambulance in the area. A part-time ambulance from Jericho is stationed at Al Jifflik in the Jordan Valley from 8am-2pm each day. What happens if soembody needs an ambulance at any other time? To try and overcome this problem, they are training local volunteers who can set up ’spot centres’ if there is a major incident in their area.
The Tubas Red Crescent provides:
* Primary health care
* Mental healthcare
* Rehabilitation for adults and children with physical and learning disabililties
* A phyco-social project for children affected by armed conflict (funded by the EU)
* An ambulance
They never charge for service costs and charge as little as possible for medicines. Despite this, they are operating against the odds. They have constant problems of being held up at road blocks, with the ambulance often being stuck for hours. As if the army wanted to prove to us that this was true, when we left the area the next day, we saw them causually holding up and searching an ambulance at Huawa Checkpoint. I wanted to photograph this, but was warned that the army could use this as an excuse to close the checkpoint altogether.
So far this year, they have had to perform two births at checkpoints, and 3 people have died because an ambulance could not get to them.
They have to run a psycho social project specifically for the ambulance staff who continuously have to deal with traumatic situations. We were given the following examples:
* People have been injured by landmines left in the mountains by the Israeli army
* Tayasir school was attacked by the army, who fired bullets and rockets into the school
* Ambulances are fired at by the army
* On one occaision, the ambulance was on its way to see a sick man when they found the army there. it was dark and the army directed them where to walk – they found themselves walking on the bodies of people who had just been shot by the army.
* We met an ambulance man who told us about a time when he had been doing a long shift with nothing to eat. He stopped for something to eat, and the army informed him to eat his food off of the body of soembody they had just shot.
They have international volunteers working with their ambulances because they are deperately short of money and staff, and they believe that the presence of internationals can curtail some of the more extreme behaviour of the army.
Saturday, May 6, we will protest against settler violence.
Please contact us at the two email addresses below for times and locations.
roeemet@yahoo.com
avichay@shovrimshtika.org
We shall protest against their violence and the indifference of the security forces in South Mt. Hebron. Last week, children from Tuba were attacked on their way back from school by settlers from Maon. In spite of the presence of military and police forces, the harassment of the children continued for an entire hour till Ta’ayush activists reached the spot.
Settlers from Avigail, Sussya and its outposts continue to attack and harrass Palestinians living in the region and damage their property. The Israeli security forces always manage to arrive when it is too late to prevent the destruction. Those wishing to join should send their name and phone-number to one of the following
From our experience in this region, the number of participants makes a great difference. Do try to help us.
South Mt. Hebron Committee”
