I was born here, this is my land, if I die, I will die here.

You can see our photos of IOF training on Palestinian land on Flickr here

During the night of 8th March 2012, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) destroyed Palestinian agricultural land in the village of Al Farisiya. As women around the world celebrated International Women’s Day, the women of this community had their livlihoods destroyed.

This was not an isolated incident – during the last week Israeli soldiers have been training extensively with tanks and armored vehicles in the northern Jordan Valley.

Abdullah, 65 said: “At 10pm, soldiers entered the farmland in military vehicles and started to drive all over the crops of basil. When I asked what they were doing and told them to stop, the soldiers sent us to bring our ID cards. When the soldier saw Tubas on the ID, he told us to go back to Tubas.”

Abdullah replied,”I own this land and have been here a long time, you can see the trees beside the house are very old. I am 65 and was born here, I don’t want to go to Tubas, I was born here.”

The soldier in charge threatened him by saying they were doing training here and he might be killed. Abdullah replied, “I was born here, this is my land, if I die, I will die here.”

The soldier repeated his threat, saying that if he stayed here he risked death, when Abdullah questioned him again saying: ”But why do you want me to leave my land? I will not leave my land. If I leave my land this life doesn’t have any meaning for me.”

The final response of the soldiers was to destroy more of the basil crops before driving in to the crop of chickpeas to destroy this field too.

Background on Al Farisiya

The majority of families in Al Farisiya sustain themselves by raising animals. There are also farmers who grow vegetables and palm trees. For years they depended on a spring called Asshek in El Malih valley for irrigation. In 2008 the Occupation Authority stopped them from using Asshek spring, despite the spring being located on the villagers’ land and them having documentation to prove that they used the spring for generations. The Occupation Authority then issued demolition orders against everyone in the village.