The Jordan Valley

Al-Hadidiyeh, February 2010: Israel effectively pressuring Palestinian Bedouin community to leave the Jordan Valley

22 February 2010

The Jordan Valley is classified as Area C and is, therefore, under complete Israeli control. Israel has imposed harsh restrictions on building and movement there that apply to Palestinians alone, effectively pushing them to leave area.

The Civil Administration does not allow Palestinians to build in Bedouin areas in the valley and systematically demolishes the temporary structures in which they live and raise their flocks. The army limits the movement of Palestinians between the valley and the rest of the West Bank, allowing only Palestinians registered as residents of the valley to enter it in private vehicles. Palestinians from elsewhere in the West Bank are allowed to enter only on foot or by public transportation. The separation of the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank severely infringes the human rights of many Palestinians.

The Bedouin community of al-Hadidiyeh is situated in the north of the Jordan Valley. The settlements Ro'i and Beka'ot were built east of it, partially on its farmland. ‘Abd a-Rahim Bsharat, 60, who has lived in the community his whole life, estimates that there are ten families, a total of 91 persons, now living in it, in three small clusters. The residents, like those of many other small Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley, gain their livelihood by raising sheep and goats and by working their land.

In the census taken by Israel in 1967, the authorities registered all persons living in the area as residents of the nearby towns of Tammun and Tubas. Therefore, there is no official information on the number of residents who lived in al-Hadidiyeh at the time. Bsharat estimates that before 1967, there were about 2,500 residents, some of whom fled to Jordan after the war.

Since the mid-1970s, Israel has pressured the residents to abandon their land, along with establishing settlements in the area. Bsharat describes how the army fined shepherds who grazed their flocks on land near the settlements, and how, in some instances, soldiers fired at the flocks, killing several sheep and confiscating animals. In recent months, B'Tselem has documented several cases in which residents of al-Hadidiyeh claimed that the security coordinators of Ro'i and Beka'ot assaulted or harassed them while they were grazing their flocks, in an attempt to distance them from the settlements. The testimonies paint a worrisome picture of army and police support for the security coordinators' harassment of the shepherds.

Three years ago, the Israeli High Court of Justice ordered that the residents of al-Hadidiyeh be removed from their homes, accepting the position of the Civil Administration that the residents were living on land classified as “agricultural” in plans drafted by the British Mandate in the 1940s. The High Court also accepted the state's position that their living on the site posed a security threat because of its proximity to the Ro'i settlement.
In recent years, the Civil Administration demolished the shacks of the Bsharat family and others in the community four times. Currently, the Civil Administration threatens to demolish all the shacks in the community yet again.

Click here to enlarge map

Map: the small community of al-Hadidiyeh and the settlements built near it.
Map: the small community of al-Hadidiyeh and the settlements built near it.

The harsh restrictions Israel places on movement of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley make life very difficult for the residents of al-Hadidiyeh. In addition to the general restrictions, the army has blocked access from the community to the Alon Road (Route 578), by placing a dirt pile on a connecting dirt road that crosses fields cultivated by Ro'i settlers. To reach the Alon Road, residents of al-Hadidiyeh must cross through part of the Ro'i settlement itself, and when the gate to the settlement is closed, they have to travel a much longer route, which runs between Ro'i and Beka'ot.

Residents of al-Hadidiyeh receive all their services from the towns of Tammun and Tubas, which are situated in Area A. The shortest way to the two towns is along a dirt road leading to Tammun, a trip that takes 15 minutes. The army placed a gate on the road that it opens only twice a week, at set times in the morning and afternoon. Only persons registered with the army as residents of the area, including residents of al-Hadidiyeh, are allowed to pass. At other times, the residents must drive to the Hamra checkpoint, about 30 minutes' travel south of al-Hadidiyeh, and from there north to Tammun or Tubas, a trip that takes another 30 minutes.

Persons requiring medical treatment also have to use this route. The army does not allow Palestinian ambulances to cross the Hamra checkpoint to go to Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley, even in emergency cases. The ambulances have to wait at the checkpoint for the patient to be brought to them.

The community has no school, and to get to their schools in Tammun, the children from al-Hadidiyeh have to travel the long way via the Hamra checkpoint. To enable them to attend school regularly, many of the children spend weekday nights with relatives in Tammun.
The residents of al-Hadidiyeh also have trouble marketing their produce throughout the West Bank since it is hard for West Bank merchants to reach al-Hadidiyeh and nearby communities.

Al-Hadidiyeh is not hooked up to the power grid and does not have running water. The nearby settlements, on the other hand, are hooked up to the Israeli power grid and are supplied water by the Beka'ot 1 Pumping Station, which was built by the Israel's water company, Mekorot. Although the pumping station is adjacent to their land, residents of al-Hadidiyeh have no choice but to buy water from private contractors, who come to the area every few days and charge up to 200 shekels for 10 cubic meters of water, four times the price Mekorot charges in Israel and in the settlements.

Suggested items

No Accountability

Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

The report surveys the broad spectrum of issues regarding the Israeli authorities' human rights record in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the past year, the 44th year of the Israeli occupation. An interactive version of the report is available online and distributed through social media. The report documents a sharp increase in the number of uninvolved Palestinians killed by the Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip in 2011. There was also an increase in the number of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, compared to 2010.

21 March 2012

Agriculture

The Hidden Agenda

The report reveals that as far back as the 1970s, Israel planned to annex Ma’ale Adummim. To do this, it expropriated over the years tens of thousands of dunams of Palestinian land and expelled hundreds of Beduin who were living there. Implementation of plans to expand the settlement will destroy north-south territorial contiguity in the West Bank and impede realization of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

1 December 2009

Apartheid

This is apartheid: The Israeli regime promotes and perpetuates Jewish supremacy between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River

Today, B’Tselem published a new position paper that details how the Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. In the position paper B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians. The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is engineering space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights – given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews. The Israeli regime pursues this organizing principle in four major areas: Land – Israel works to Judaize the entire area, treating land as a resource chiefly meant to benefit the Jewish population. Since 1948, Israel has taken over 90% of the land within the Green Line and built hundreds of communities for the Jewish population. Since 1967, Israel has also enacted this policy in the West Bank, building more than 280 settlements for some 600,000 Jewish Israeli citizens. Israel has not built a single community for the Palestinian population in the entire area stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (with the exception of several communities built to concentrate the Bedouin population after dispossessing them of most of their property rights). Citizenship – Jews living anywhere in the world, their children and grandchildren – and their spouses – are entitled to Israeli citizenship. In contrast, Palestinians cannot immigrate to Israeli-controlled areas, even if they, their parents or their grandparents were born and lived there. Israel makes it difficult for Palestinians who live in one of the units it controls to obtain status in another, and has enacted legislation that prohibits granting Palestinians who marry Israelis status within the Green Line. Freedom of movement – Israeli citizens enjoy freedom of movement in the entire area controlled by Israel (with the exception of the Gaza Strip) and may enter and leave the country freely. Palestinian subjects, on the other hand, require a special Israeli-issued permit to travel between the units (and sometimes inside them), and exit abroad also requires Israeli approval. Political participation – Palestinian citizens of Israel may vote and run for office, but leading politicians consistently undermine the legitimacy of Palestinian political representatives. The roughly five million Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, cannot participate in the political system that governs their lives and determines their future. They are denied other political rights as well, including freedom of speech and association. In the entire area, control over these aspects of life lies entirely in Israel’s hands – the sole power determining the population registry; land allocation; voter rolls; and the right (or denial thereof) to travel within, enter or exit any part of the area. The Israeli regime has grown increasingly explicit regarding its Jewish supremacist ideology, a process that has seen two major unmasking milestones in recent years. One was the enactment of Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People, which declares the distinction between Jews and non-Jews fundamental and legitimate, and permits institutional discrimination in land management and development, housing, citizenship, language and culture. The second came in the form of official statements regarding formal annexation of more parts of the West Bank, attesting to Israel’s long-term intentions and debunking claims of “temporary occupation.” B’Tselem stresses that the military occupation has not ended: Palestinians in the West Bank remain its direct subjects, while in the Gaza Strip they live under its effective control, exerted from the outside. At the same time, casting Israel as a “democracy” on one side of the Green Line, while it is “temporarily” occupying millions of people on the other side, is divorced from reality. This depiction ignores the fact that this state of affairs has been in place for over fifty years. It fails to take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers living east of the Green Line. It glosses over the de-jure annexation of East Jerusalem and the de-facto annexation of the rest of the West Bank. These facts lead to the conclusion that these are not two parallel regimes, but a single one, governing the entire area and all the people living in it. B’Tselem’s Executive Director, Hagai El-Ad: “The fundamental tenets of Israel’s regime, although already implemented for many years, have recently grown more explicit. This happened both with the discussion of de jure annexation after decades of de facto annexation, and with the enactment of the Nation State Basic Law, which took the existing discrimination against Palestinians and turned it into an open constitutional principle. Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it: it is one regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid. This sobering look at reality need not lead to despair, but quite the opposite. It is a call for change. After all, people created this regime, and people can change it.”

12 January 2021