[News] Told to leave, determined to stay: Bedouins of the Jordan Valley

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Told to leave, determined to stay: Bedouins of the Jordan Valley

Mohammad Alhaj <https://electronicintifada.net/people/mohammad-alhaj>
*https://electronicintifada.net/content/told-leave-determined-stay-bedouins-jordan-valley/15476*
2 February 2016

On the sparsely populated northern stretch of the occupied West Bank’s 
Jordan Valley <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jordan-valley> live 
tens of Bedouin <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bedouins> families.

Neglected by both the Palestinian Authority 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinian-authority> and harassed 
by the Israeli military, these families have to survive without running 
water or electricity.

Any water wells dug by the families themselves will likely be destroyed 
by Israel, which maintains strict control over water resources in the 
occupied West Bank. Israel does not issue building permits for more 
permanent structures. Any attempt to build such structures will likely 
end in demolition.


    Unanswered appeals

Appeals to the PA to help Jordan Valley communities secure vital 
infrastructure like roads and water pipes or access to education and 
health care have so far been in vain. Bedouin children have to travel 
nearly 20 kilometers or more than 12 miles to reach the nearest schools 
in the towns of Tubas or Tammoun. And there are no Palestinian emergency 
services in the area.

“We used to welcome [PA] officials when they came with photographers and 
reporters,” said local resident Abdulrahim Bsharat. But 90 percent of 
the promises they brought have come to nothing, he said.

How hard is it for Palestinian officials to “be honest with their 
people?” the 66-year-old asked. He lost a son after an accident. With an 
ambulance arriving six hours later, the boy bled to death.

Ibrahim Ahmed Salem is tired of unfulfilled promises. The 35-year-old 
waited years for a solar power unit for his home, one that might allow 
him to watch a few hours of TV and charge cell phones. When his neighbor 
received one from the relevant department in the PA, and he didn’t, 
however, he decided there was no point in waiting any longer. He sold a 
number of sheep and bought his own.

The last assistance he received from the PA was 40 kilograms or nearly 
90 pounds of wheat. That was in 2008.


    Shrinking land

Sheepherders for many generations, the Bedouins have seen the space for 
their traditional livelihoods diminish over the decades since the 
Israeli occupation of the Jordan Valley in 1967. Israeli settlements 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-settlements> continue 
expanding while the army keeps appropriating territory for training or 
as closed military zones 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/closed-military-zones>, excluding 
those who have long lived and farmed there.

These practices and settlement expansion have led to the demolition of 
hundreds of homes <http://www.btselem.org/jordan_valley> and the 
“temporary” displacement 
<http://www.btselem.org/video/20150824/temp_evacuations_in_jordan_valley> of 
whole Bedouin communities. Under the latter practice, communities have 
been repeatedly uprooted — sometimes every few days.

Israel has made little secret of its determination to hang on to the 
Jordan Valley under any final political agreement it would strike with 
the PA leadership, and it has built large agricultural settlements along 
the stretch that borders Jordan.

According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/btselem>, 97 percent 
<http://www.btselem.org/jordan_valley> of the Jordan Valley is 
off-limits for Palestinian use. This is almost 25 percent of the total 
area of the West Bank.

In January, Israel announced 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-idUSKCN0UY187> it 
was annexing 154 hectares or 380 acres of agricultural land just next to 
Jericho <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jericho> and on the 
northern tip of the Dead Sea 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/dead-sea>. It marks the largest 
land appropriation since 2014, when Israel purloined 400 hectares or 
nearly 1,000 acres of land to the Gush Etzion 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gush-etzion> settlement bloc 
outside Bethlehem.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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