Under it rivers flow and water is deprived.. Thirsting is another way for the occupation to displace the villages of the Jordan Valley

Central Valley

- The sun has reached the middle of the sky, announcing the midday and heralded Palestinian farmer Mujahid Kanaan to continue his work and take advantage of the sunny hours of the day after a rainy week to remove the excess weeds that sprouted among his fava beans crop.

In the village of "Frosch Beit Dajan" in the central valleys of the West Bank, farmers arrive with Canaan during their day to take care of their agriculture in order to gain a small profit that compensates for the loss and suffering caused by the Israeli occupation, the last of which was the demolition of one of the agricultural ponds a few days ago on the pretext that it was not licensed and that it was located in the "C" area.

On a tour, Canaan took us in his land to show us closely how 20 years ago he uprooted all his citrus trees (two thousand trees) and turned to planting vegetables, especially winter ones, trying to reduce his use of water that Israel originally confiscated from the ground and its surface.

Kanaan says that the recent demolition affected a pool that the residents allocated for drinking water with a capacity of 500 cups, and another for irrigation, "in fact, we were denied access to rainwater flowing through medicines."

Thaer Khatatbeh fled the oppression of the settlers in Tana, to find him double in the Furush of Beit Dajan (Al Jazeera)

And not by preventing water alone, the occupation punishes the residents of Al-Froush for displacing them. It forbids new construction and restoration of the old, and this is a reality faced by most of the village’s houses built of mud or cement with tin roofs to avoid the demolition of the occupation.

There is another thing in which the population’s suffering is no less, which is reducing the areas of grazing and the pursuit of livestock owners, which have decreased from more than 20,000 heads two decades ago to about two thousand now, of which 100 are all that remains for the citizen, Thaer Khataba, 39, out of 200 heads that he paid badly. The situation and the lack of space and the pursuit of the occupation to sell it.

We found Khattabeh grazing his sheep hundreds of meters from his home in a land that the occupation classified as “military zones.” The occupation divides the village into “C” and “military” zones, and therefore prohibits him from approaching them, and any breach will expose him to accountability, financial fines, and possibly detention for him and his livestock.

Farmer Mujahid Kanaan standing near a pond that was recently demolished by the occupation (Al-Jazeera)

11 years ago, Khatatbeh resorted to live in Al-Froush, coming from nearby Khirbet Tana, to escape the oppression of the settlers and the occupation army, which demolished his home 3 times in the Khirbet and made him and his sheep out in the open. A drop of water".

Israel confiscates 11,000 dunams (a dunam equals one thousand square metres) out of 14,000 dunams, which are all the lands of the Furush, and the remaining 3,000 dunams are classified as “C” areas, that is, under its security control. Reflected by the deterioration of its infrastructure and services.

On the other hand, "Koki" - an Israeli settler - controls more than 25 thousand dunums of the land of Al-Froush and the surrounding areas, but with the help of the occupation authorities he built a road in the mountain within only a week that would connect it to the settlement outpost he is building above the village.

The settlements of "Al-Hamra" and "Mechora", inhabited by a few dozen settlers, lie on the village lands, in addition to the presence of an army camp and a military checkpoint that besieges it and enjoys torturing passers-by through it.

Farmers build tin ponds and others of dirt to collect rainwater, but the occupation demolishes them (Al-Jazeera)

According to Tawfiq al-Hajj Muhammad, coordinator of the Committee for the Defense of Furush Beit Dajan, water is the "secret of the village" and the reason why the occupation targeted it and deprived its residents of their most basic needs.

Muhammad told Al-Jazeera Net, who met him on his farm, which is described as and another close to it, the last strongholds of citrus trees, which formed an "identification card" for the village of Al-Froush in the nineties of the last century, producing 50% of the Palestinian citrus basket at the time, "It was exporting to Jordan only 30 tons per day for 5 years. The best price and the highest quality.

After the year 2000, Muhammad adds, the residents of Al-Froush gradually switched to winter crops and others through greenhouses that do not need much water and whose irrigation is controlled, and here farmers built ponds of tin and dirt to collect rainwater and that extracted through wells, and despite this, the occupation pursues them with demolition.

With a simple comparison, we realized the extent of Israel’s control over Froush water and the racism of its distribution. Out of the 5 Palestinian artesian wells, only 3 remained after two of them dried up due to 3 similar wells dug by the occupation at greater depths and for which periodic maintenance is carried out. In return, the Palestinians are prevented from maintaining their wells or granting them licenses for new ones. Or even set up pools to collect water.

While the Palestinian well pumps at its best 100 cups per hour, its Israeli counterpart produces 700 cups, which are transported through pipes larger and wider than the Palestinian ones to the Dead Sea settlements, which are 40 kilometers away.

The occupation dried up the springs feeding the Fush of the Ain Shibli spring, preventing the use of running rainwater through medicines, and cutting pipes that he says are “illegal” and some farmers secretly connected them to the Israeli water network, which cost them large sums of $10,000 per line. He does this and sometimes arrests him and seizes his equipment, "and it happened that one of them was fined 15,000 US dollars a while ago," confirms Hajj Muhammad.

An Israeli artesian well, among others, dug by the occupation at great depths, to drain the waters of the Palestinians in Al-Farouch (Al-Jazeera)

It is ironic that the village of Al-Froush, which is inhabited by 1,000 people now (they were 7,000 before 1967 and decreased after the occupation of the West Bank) receives its services from drinking water and electricity through the village school because it is licensed by Israel, and the residents consider it “Tabu” that strengthened their presence in the village, while the occupation sees Licensing it 4 decades ago is a "big sin", says Hajj Muhammad.

With all its might, the occupation seeks to displace “Furush Beit Dajan” and empty it of the population, and obstructs all services provided by not granting it the required licenses, whether to deliver services or to build homes, part of which is demolished and most of them are notified of demolition.

Thus, the occupation applies the plan of "annexation and expansion" to the village of Al-Froush as part of the plan of Yigal Allon - the former Israeli Minister of Agriculture - which aims to isolate and control the entire Palestinian Valley and control it, especially since it now controls 88% of it through dozens of settlements and army camps.

Azem al-Hajj Muhammad, head of the Furush Beit Dajan local council, says that his village sits on a large water tank, and this is the reason for its direct targeting, as Israel controls 83% of the Palestinian water.

In addition to water, there are security and other "Biblical" reasons, through which the occupation wants to Judaize the furniture;

"It occupies a strategic position, separating it from the north of the West Bank from its south, and it runs along the Alon settlement line."

A paradise on earth that its people see, and a water and strategic treasure that the occupation promises.