Life in the Jordan Valley

Last week I went to the Jordan Valley, which is the eastern part of the West Bank, running north to south along the Jordanian border. It's about the only part of the West Bank that has a natural abundance of water, rich fertile soil, and natural minerals from the Dead Sea. All this makes it perfect agricultural territory, and it also makes the Valley a major target for Israeli expansion and land confiscation. It was occupied by Israel following the 1967 war, and now, after 40 years of occupation, Palestinians control about 5.6% of the territory, while Israel controls 94.4%. Before 1967, there were some 200,000 Palestinians living in the Valley, and now there are only about 52,000 left, with most of them concentrated in the city of Jericho. I want to tell a story to show that the consistently diminishing Palestinian presence in the Jordan Valley isn't an accident.

We stopped at a few villages on our tour, but there was one that struck me the most. Actually, I shouldn't even really call it a village, because it's only one house. There used to be about 100 families living in this village, but slowly, they were forced to leave, with many of them even having their homes demolished by Israeli troops with bulldozers. Now, all that's left of the village is one house with one farmer living there with his family. This farmer absolutely refuses to leave his land, no matter what he's subjected to.

He's got a greenhouse and a small patch of land that he farms, and he's surrounded by illegal settlements. He has no electricity, even though he has two electrical towers on his property, maybe 10 metres from his front door (see the last picture below). But these towers, one running north-south, and the other running east-west, only carry power to the Israeli settlements that are on all sides of him. Even though there's all this electricity running right on top of his head, he doesn't get any of it.

This farmer is also unconnected to any running water network. This is despite the fact that, just like the electricity situation, he has a water pump on his property that pumps water to the settlements around him. A nice, steady flow of water runs right underneath him, but he can't have any. He actually used to pump water himself from a spring a few kilometres away, but a few months ago, Israeli troops came and cut the pipes and dug them up, so he can't do that any more (see the picture of his cut up pipe on the right). Why did they cut his pipes? They said he was "stealing water from nature." Completely absurd.

But even in the face of all this, and seeing his fellow villagers lose their homes one by one, this farmer refuses to leave. This is his land, and he won't give it up to a colonialist power. But now, Israel has issued him a demolition order saying that his house will be destroyed if he doesn't leave voluntarily by a certain date. The funny - or not so funny - thing about this demolition order is that it states that his house will be destroyed, but his greenhouse won't. Why will his greenhouse be spared? Is this some form of compassion that Israel is showing, a way of "going easy" on the farmer? Well, no. It's actually so that when the farmer leaves and the settlers come and occupy his land, they'll already have a working greenhouse. They won't have to go through all the trouble of building the greenhouse, planting the seeds, setting up an irrigation system. The nice Palestinan farmer will have left all that behind for them.

So what choice does the farmer have? He can move off of his land, but where is he supposed to go, since his family has lived in this small village for generations? Or he can stay there and watch his home get demolished by Israeli soldiers. Thousands of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley have had to make this choice since 1967. It's really surreal, we were driving along the main road through the Valley, and the guide would point to the side of the road and tell us that a village used to be there. All that's left now is a few piles of rocks that used to be houses. If someone hadn't told me, I would never have known that people lived there. And now the land "belongs" to Israel, and the people have forcibly been expelled.

This is why the diminishing Palestinian presence isn't an accident. All of this is part of a deliberate policy that's going on all over the Jordan Valley and the West Bank in general. Doing things like cutting off water and electricity, restricting freedom of movement, preventing expansion of towns and villages, is a way of constricting Palestinian communities, making life virtually unsustainable for them. In essence, the Israeli state wants the land without the people. It's amazing that there are farmers like this one who will go through anything to prevent that from happening.