JORDAN VALLEY -- STOLEN LAND: ISRAEL DESTROYS SCHOOLS, PROHIBITS CONSTRUCTION, WATER OR ELECTRICITY CONNECTIONS
Victoria Brittain
Photo: Burhan Basharat, father of eight, sits in the remains of his destroyed home in West Bank village of Khirbet al-Makhoul, Jordan Valley, October 9, 2013. Photos by: Keren Manor, Ryan Rodrick Beiler, Oren Ziv / Activestills.org
The Jordan Valley in the Palestinian West Bank is under active annexation to Israel – in breach of the 4th Geneva Convention. Victoria Brittain went there to explore what this means for the people of the Valley, and the implications for John Kerry’s ‘peace negotiations’.
Traumatised barefoot children, silent exhausted mothers, desperate fathers, now living in new shelters, spoke of their ever-present fear of army and settler violence.
Northeast of the Palestinian city of Nablus the road towards the northern Jordan Valley and the international border with Jordan runs for miles alongside almost empty ranges of rocky brown hills designated on UN maps as ‘Israeli Nature Reserve’.
Much of the road has concrete posts every hundred yards inscribed “DANGER Firing Zone”, and the UN maps also shade it as an Israeli closed military area.
The ever-present fear of violence
But every few miles there are tents or simple structures of Palestinian farms with sheep and cows in makeshift pens visible, set back below the hills.
In recent weeks and months defenceless families in this remote place have had their homes and farms repeatedly destroyed by military bulldozers in dawn raids.
Traumatised barefoot children, silent exhausted mothers, desperate fathers, now living in new shelters, spoke of their ever-present fear of army and settler violence.
This area is part of a flashpoint in the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations being pushed by US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Israel wants to keep the whole Jordan Valley for at least the next 40 years. The US has suggested stationing international troops there. And in the meantime Israeli politicians are openly talking up annexation of the whole valley up to the border with Jordan.
Oslo hopes betrayed
Much of the Jordan Valley was designated in Oslo 2 as Area C – the 60% of the West Bank where Israel has complete control, and has used it systematically to force Palestinians out in the 20 years since the false hope of the first Oslo Accords in 1993.
In Area C construction is prohibited, no water or electricity connection allowed, schools and water pumps put up by aid agencies are destroyed, health care is almost absent. Israeli settlements, outposts and military bases proliferate.
Five thousand Palestinians live in 38 communities in parts of Area C like these designated as ‘firing zones’ for military training. An occasional crump of artillery could be heard in the distance, and twice we saw soldiers in the hills or on the road.
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