The Jordan Valley: The borders of the Palestinians and their food basket

Mervat Sadeq-Ramallah
Ayman Fadilat-Amman

The morning after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to annex the Palestinian Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea to Israel if he wins the elections, human rights activist Aref Daraghmeh wanders between the villages under threat and monitors what people expected after years of land, water and pasture confiscation.

Netanyahu's declaration, which the Palestinian foreign ministry called "the ill-fated promise", did not come as a real surprise on the ground. Since its occupation in 1967.

According to the National Information Center, the Jordan Valley extends from Bisan in the south to Safed in the north, Ein Gedi to the Negev in the south, and from the middle of the Jordan River to the eastern slopes of the West Bank. The total area of ​​the Jordan Valley is 720 thousand dunums.

The importance of the Great Jordan Valley is that it is a warm and fertile natural area that can be exploited for agriculture throughout the year and sits above the most important water basin in Palestine. The Jordan Valley is a quarter of the West Bank, with about 50,000 Palestinians, including the city of Jericho, or 2% of the West Bank population.

The area of ​​agricultural land is 280 thousand dunums, or 38.8% of the total area of ​​the Jordan Valley. Palestinians exploit 50,000 dunams, while the settlers control 27,000 dunums of agricultural land.

Israel controls 400,000 dunams under the pretext of using closed military zones, or 55.5% of the total area of ​​the Jordan Valley, and prohibits Palestinians from practicing agricultural or urban activities in these areas, which have established 90 military sites since the occupation of 1967.

According to the Oslo Accords, the Jordan Valley was divided into areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority, covering an area of ​​85 km, 7.4% of the total area of ​​the Jordan Valley, and areas joint between the Authority and Israel, an area of ​​50 km, 4.3%, and areas under full Israeli control, an area of ​​1155 km, and constitute the vast majority of the Jordan Valley. By 88.3%).

As of 2015, 31 Israeli settlements, mostly agricultural, with a population of 8,300, had been established on the Jordan Valley. The oldest settlements are "Mekhola", "Misawa" and "Yitav", which were established in 1969.

According to official Palestinian data that the occupation has displaced more than 50,000 residents of the Jordan Valley since 1967, in addition to the entire population under the pretext of their stay in military areas, such as the people of Khirbat al-Hadidiya in the northern Jordan Valley.

The southern Jordan Valley contains 91 wells, the central Jordan Valley contains 68 wells, and the northern Jordan Valley contains 10 wells. Sixty per cent of these wells were drilled in the Jordanian era, and Israel controlled most of them.

Palestinians call the Jordan Valley the "food basket", which accounts for 50 percent of the total agricultural land in the West Bank, where 60 percent of the total vegetables are produced.

Alon Plan
Walid Assaf, head of the settlement authority in the Palestinian Authority, says that the Judaization of the Jordan Valley began decades ago in what is known as the "Allon" plan drawn up by Israeli Minister Yigal Allon shortly after the 1967 war.

The plan sought to annex most of the Jordan Valley from the river to the eastern slopes of the edge of the West Bank hills, East Jerusalem and the Etzion bloc south of Bethlehem to Israel.

Assaf said that the plan was to keep the Jordan Valley and the eastern slopes of the West Bank empty of the population by strengthening settlements and annexing it to Israel later and turning it into a buffer zone between the population of the West Bank and their Arab extension. Construction and housing.

Despite this reality, the Palestinians saw Netanyahu's threat as an attempt to win Israeli votes in the Knesset elections scheduled for November 17. "The land of Palestine is not part of Netanyahu's election campaign," he said.

A statement issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Netanyahu chose the Palestinian card exclusively in the election bidding race in coordination with US President Donald Trump and his "Zionists" team, and that the Netanyahu Declaration places the Palestinians and the international community with great responsibilities and challenges and a different stage full of dangers and challenges.

Programmed policy
Aref Daraghmeh, who is in charge of the al-Maleh village council, a Palestinian community in the Jordan Valley, says there is little left for Palestinians here after Israel has taken over water and agricultural land.

Daraghmeh, a human rights observer in the region, says this has been a programmed policy that has been finalized in the last three years, especially where dozens of outposts have been planted in the Jordan Valley.

Netanyahu's threats mean confiscating the entire Palestinian area along the border with Jordan from Auja in Jericho to Bardala in the north, including dozens of villages.

According to Daraghmeh, at least half the inhabitants of the Jordan Valley will be directly affected, losing the "focus of dignity", their reach, the borders of their state, their water basin and their food basket. "A Palestinian state without the Jordan Valley is worth nothing."

Threat to Jordan
On the Jordanian side, former Foreign Minister Kamel Abu Jaber said in Netanyahu's statement that the Jordan Valley included a direct threat to Jordan's political, security and humanitarian interests.

"The Jordan Valley was originally Jordanian and was under the rule of Jordan until 1967 under international law," Abu Jaber said.

Abu Jaber was head of the Jordanian-Palestinian joint delegation to the Madrid peace conference in 1992 and was then foreign minister.

Abu Jaber warned in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net that Netanyahu's decision, if implemented, would threaten the Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement, which would violate Arab land, and that such a passage would give Israel a decision to authorize the rest of the Arab countries.

Abu Jaber accused Netanyahu of taking the green light from Trump, "confirming that the American mediator in the peace process has become fully biased towards Israel."

The former minister called for the importance of coordinating positions and decisions between the Palestinian and Jordanian leaderships to face the Israeli threats. He said that the Palestinian issue is going through its most dangerous stages, especially with the Gulf countries abandoning their role and the state of trot for normalization with Israel.