Increase in the cost of cow feed as a result of the persecutions of the occupation and settlers (Al Jazeera)

The Northern Jordan Valley -

Despite the heavy rainy season and the grass extending over vast areas of land, the Palestinian Qadri Daraghmeh stands in the Northern Jordan Valley unable to graze his cows, and is forced to lock them inside their barns under the pressure of the occupation army and settlers and their measures to confiscate and steal them.

For two consecutive times, the occupation army and police, at the instigation of settlers, confiscated dozens of cows owned by Daraghmeh, and forced him to pay a huge fine to get them back, claiming that they entered private Israeli lands and pastures. While citizens say that it is a new policy to displace them and seize the remaining land, most of which is now in the grip of the occupation.

Under the cover of darkness, members of the occupation police and army, accompanied by settlers, stormed the Daraghmeh farm barn early last January, confiscated and stole more than 100 heads of cows, and by force, 30 were recovered from their hands, leaving the occupation withholding 80 heads.

He later admitted to only 20 of them, denied the rest, and forced their owner, Qadri Daraghmeh, to pay more than 13 thousand dollars to recover them.

Days after this robbery, the occupation returned and confiscated, for the same reason, 48 heads of cows from the same farmer and severely beat him and his sons. Two of them were arrested and their vehicle was impounded. The occupation authorities also asked him to pay a fine of $41,000, which Daraghmeh refused, because he did not have the money he had originally borrowed the first time, and because the occupation would confiscate it again.

Settlers, accompanied by the army, storm the Al-Farisiya area in the Jordan Valley and assault citizens (Palestinian press)

Bulk confiscations

Daraghma (58 years old) told Al Jazeera Net, "The occupation has so far confiscated 108 of his cows, and is demanding that he pay $15 a day as food allowance for each head, in addition to a huge fine."

He adds that he is actually thinking about leaving after about a century of his and his family's presence in the northern Jordan Valley, as the cows have become confined to barns, he has lost pastures after they were confiscated, and he is incurring huge sums of money in fines.

Daraghmeh and his family of about 30 individuals have more than 180 dunums (a dunum equals a thousand square metres), but he does not control an inch of it, due to the measures of the occupation and its settlers. He says that the policy of confiscating livestock in such quantities and fining them huge sums of money is “unprecedented.”

In light of the Palestinian official and institutional weakness in obtaining the rights of citizens in the Jordan Valley, Daraghmeh and others were forced to resort to the Israeli courts to recover their livestock, saying, “The country is lost, will the livestock return?”

In the production season

Like Daraghmeh, the occupation confiscated 800 heads of sheep from citizen Muhammad Idais and the sheep of his brothers in the Al-Jiftlik Al-Ghuriya area in the northern West Bank, and fined him more than 41 thousand dollars on January 22.

Idais told Al Jazeera Net, “The settlers falsely claimed that we graze our sheep in the Umm Al-Ajaj area, and that we block the main street (Street 90) with sheep, and that this is forbidden.” He added that the occupation “gave us an hour and a half to pay the fine, otherwise the sheep would be confiscated, so we sought help from the neighbors and relatives and paid.”

Idais, and Daraghmeh before him, were forced to pay these fines and recover their livestock because they are going through the “production season” that they wait for throughout the year, when they give birth to new babies and produce milk and cheese, which is their only source of income.

The occupation displaces Palestinian farmers and steals their livestock and lands in the northern Jordan Valley (Al Jazeera)

Alone

Under the retaliatory measures of the occupation and settlers, citizens were forced to imprison their livestock, and bear the consequences of the spread of diseases among the livestock and their death, in addition to the high cost of food and treatment.

About 1,800 Palestinians live in 19 Bedouin communities in the northern Jordan Valley, and the occupation used to restrict them and prevent them from accessing pastures and cultivating their lands under the pretext that they are military areas and training sites for the Israeli army. Now, public lands have become “private lands” for the settlement council, which claims to have sovereignty over them, according to Mahdi. Daraghmeh, head of the Maleh Village Council and the Bedouin clans in the northern Jordan Valley.

Daraghmeh told Al Jazeera Net, "Citizens have become trapped within their Bedouin communities, and have completely lost their land and pastures, which threatens their existence and the source of their stability, especially their livestock and agricultural wealth."

He added that more than 30 families had their agricultural tools and livestock confiscated during the past few weeks.

Of the more than 50,000 heads of sheep and 5,000 cows, the citizens of the northern Jordan Valley no longer own only a third of those numbers and less, while one of the shepherd settlers fenced off 50,000 dunams of land and placed 3,000 heads of cows and 5,000 sheep there.

On the other hand, Daraghma adds to Al Jazeera Net, at the height of the growing season and the influx of weeds, Palestinians are deprived of grazing and their livestock are confined inside barns, and thus their numbers decrease due to the spread of diseases and the high cost of raising them.

By classifying them as “C” areas, the occupation subjects the Palestinian Jordan Valley to its military control, and turns a large part of it into lands belonging to the settlement council according to special tenders, despite its private ownership by the Palestinians.

The official, Daraghmeh, warned against the plan to displace Palestinians in the Jordan Valley, and said, “The citizen is the only threshold remaining to stop settlement.”

The occupation is working to isolate (in the plan of Yigal Allon, the former Israeli Minister of Agriculture in 1967), all of the Palestinian Jordan Valley, which constitutes a third of the area of ​​the West Bank, estimated at 5,800 square kilometers, especially since it controls 88% of it through dozens of settlements and army camps.

Farmers' sheep became trapped in their pens due to occupation measures (Al Jazeera)

Confiscation and fine

Regarding what the Palestinians face in the Jordan Valley, Amir Daoud, documentation official at the Wall and Settlement Resistance Authority, says that the citizen is facing “direct forced deportations resulting from a coercive, repulsive environment.”

Dawoud told Al Jazeera Net that the most dangerous thing about the recent policy of livestock confiscation and financial fines is that they were imposed by the settlement council, not through official Israeli bodies, and it is a dangerous indicator that the settlers have begun to take control and impose sanctions on the Palestinians.

Daoud called on citizens to resist and not obey the orders of the settlers who seek to create a new and dangerous reality. But he said that the financial fines imposed are heavy, and no institution can handle them.

In addition to confiscation and fines, the settlers took control of vast grazing areas and Palestinian water sources, and built pastoral settlement outposts.

According to Daoud, 85% of pastoral settlement is concentrated in the Palestinian Jordan Valley from north to south, and settlers prevent citizens from reaching more than 350 thousand dunams. In 2023, more than 14 grazing hotspots were monitored, 12 of which were in the northern Jordan Valley only.

The occupation also displaced 25 Bedouin communities, 22 of which after the “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7, and included more than 1,560 citizens.

Source: Al Jazeera