Occupation forces attack Jordan Valley families amid Covid-19 outbreak
On 1st June 2020 Israeli Occupation Forces stormed the village of Al-Jiftlik in the north of the Jordan Valley. Israeli military vehicles closed all the roads surrounding the village and did not allow Palestinian residents to leave or to enter.
Israeli soldiers raided the house of Anwar Abu Joudeh, arresting both him and two of his sons: Jihad and Raed. The family’s water tanks and private property were also confiscated. Soldiers also arrested Rabih Abu Majali and confiscated the family’s private agricultural equipment.
Following these arrests, the army destroyed the village’s water lines, which are used to water grape vines and date trees providing fruit for the three families of Abu Salem, Ibrahim and Issa.
This attack was one of the largest on the residents of the Jordan Valley. Shortly afterwards, the Israeli military entered the village of Bardala and proceeded to demolish four vegetable shops for the second time in a week.
These attacks by the Israeli Occupation Forces are part of wider Israeli military plans to completely annex the Jordan Valley, forcing out the indigenous Palestinian population. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated that “Israel will never cede the Jordan Valley”[1] as the region is a strategic necessity to the Zionist settler colonial idea of a ‘Greater Israel’ that will occupy all of the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
In order to drive out the Palestinian population, Israel systematically carries out demolitions in the region, destroying water wells and pipe lines, confiscating private property and imprisoning villagers. Israel seeks to destroy the Palestinian economy in these areas and make daily life unliveable so as to drive Palestinians from their homes.
Palestinians in the Jordan Valley, however, remain steadfast
and continue to resist the illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of their
land by rebuilding what Israel destroys from the ground up.
[1] Tom Anderson et al, Targeting Israeli Apartheid: A Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Handbook, London: Corporate Watch, 2005, p.231.
