Training causes devastation: Israeli military again temporarily displaces 15 Khirbet Humsah families; since 1 May, hundreds of dunams in the Jordan Valley lost to blazes caused by military training
15 May 2019
At around 7:00 o’clock this morning (Wednesday, 15 May 2019) Israeli Civil Administration personnel, accompanied by a military jeep escort, came for the third time this week to the Palestinian community of Khirbet Humsah (al-Foqa) in the northern Jordan Valley. Once again, they ordered fifteen families to temporarily evacuate their homes, this time from 7:00 A.M. until 2:00 P.M. The families complied, some leaving by tractor-towed carts and other vehicles, others on foot.
Yesterday (Tuesday, 14 May 2019), two fires broke out on nearby pastureland – one in the morning and one in the evening – as a result of the military training there. The blazes destroyed dozens of dunams [1 dunam = 1 square kilometer] of pastureland that the community uses for grazing its livestock.
Since the beginning of May, four other fires have already erupted as a result of the nearly daily military training in the area. These blazes have destroyed hundreds of dunams of pastureland and dozens of dunams of cultivated farmland.