The Jordan Valley: Israel is racing against time to complete Judaization

Atef Daghlas-Northern Jordan Valley

In an area of ​​no more than three kilometers or less, Najeh travels like Abu 'Odeh after every demolition he is subjected to by the soldiers who are surprisingly armed with weapons and sudden military decisions marked by the seal of the area commander, demanding him to leave the area and not to return.

At the same time as he is abandoned as a resident of his home and land in the northern Palestinian Jordan Valley, the Israeli occupation authorities are calling on settlers to come and live there, in a move that reflects the occupation's aims to Judaize Palestinian lands.

Before he lifted his head off his pillow after a hard day grazing his cattle, the soldiers had surrounded the house of the 46-year-old citizen and ten family members, including his married son, who took him out and proceeded to demolish him without prior warning or giving him enough time to remove his simple furniture.

During the past 50 days, the Israeli occupation forces demolished Ka'abneh's house twice, and warned him of a third demolition on September 1, which the man voluntarily carried out. If he did not do so, the soldiers would demolish him and financially fined him. It costs about 2,500 dollars. "

Ka'abneh speaks of the confiscation of housing and equipment, where the occupation and other occupation take away the elements of life in the Jordan Valley, and singled out for their displacement "collective" in the end.

Gradual displacement
After a time of talking under the roof of a shanty house, he led us as a bastion of the demolished place where the broken iron pieces were scattered on the ground, standing on the ruins of the place.``I was born here, and my family and I have been living for more than half a century, and the settlers are emergency and their aggression is escalating, '' he says.

Closer to the Judaization of the land and deportation, the occupation deployed "settlers shepherds" in the mountains and near the homes of Palestinian Bedouin to narrow their grazing and cultivation places.

The settlers' move is not only to fight, but to confiscate the land. On one night a few days ago, they plowed 1,500 dunams (1,000 acres) of land at night and interceded it in the morning.

Over the land, the occupation controls the water completely and buys it to the citizens in limited quantities at high prices.The settler's share of the water is estimated to be twice as much as the Palestinian (420 liters for the settler compared to 24 for the Palestinian daily).

Ka'abneh has a water tank to drink from and water his sheep, whose numbers have been reduced by the occupation measures from about 600 heads to only 300.Just the sheep returning from her desert pasture ran successively towards a water basin from which a plastic pipe opened cautiously and closed by the man as well as trying to water all his sheep.

In addition, the occupation uses military training as a means to terrorize citizens, whether left behind or tense events during the training by evicting residents from their homes for days and hours, as happened with Kaabneh during the month of Ramadan, where he was evacuated for three days each week for about twenty hours.

According to data published by the Palestinian News Agency (WAFA), the Israeli authorities demolished at least 698 housing units in the Jordan Valley between 2006 and 2017, which is inhabited by approximately 3,000 people. From 2012 until the end of September 2017, at least 806 housing units were demolished. Agricultural buildings.

Yusuf Ka'abneh, 19, is worried about his future as a young man on his land and his cattle compared to the settlers' children, though he refuses to budge.

Daily monitoring
All of this Israeli repression is monitored by Aref Daraghmeh, a human rights activist in the Jordan Valley. He has recently doubled his warnings on various social media sites by spreading the suffering of citizens daily.

Arif spent most of his day and night observing violations of the occupation.He said that after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared more than a year ago that the settlements of the Jordan Valley were the "safe fence" of the occupation state, the violence of settlers and their multiplication and take many forms.

The most recent violations were the seizure of 15,000 dunums by 15 settlers, which were open lands and grazing land for Palestinians to establish three outposts, and even the eastern border with Jordan, estimated at more than 150,000 dunums, of which less than 3% were left to Palestinians.

Faced with the arrogance of the soldiers, Daraghma stands with all his might, armed with his camera to document their attacks.He says that they have gone beyond demolition, banning grazing and military training to confiscate residents' equipment such as agricultural tractors, water tanks and even their houses from tents of sackcloth and tin.And their cattle become sheep and cows in the preparation of confiscation if found in areas prohibited by the occupation.

Coalition Policy
Soldiers form "alliances" with the settlers to protect them, blocking land under various pretexts and then presenting it to the settlers. Recently, the occupation has published posters calling on settlers to live in the Jordan Valley as their "state" amid the provision of all infrastructure services, especially roads and water.

The number of settlements in the northern Jordan Valley has increased to 11 in addition to three new outposts, other than mobile caravans on top of the mountains.Israeli soldiers set up eight camps and threw dozens of roads and trenches for military training.Dragameh added, "The demolition policy of the Palestinians is matched by the settlement policy."

Through his daily documentation of the attacks and his successive warnings, the human rights activist sends brief messages to the Palestinian authorities in various locations to save the remaining valleys that constitute 'Palestinian dignity,' and says that the projects submitted are 'emergency and exhausted' and do not achieve the required support of citizens in front of settlement expansion.