Ayman e-Deis near his demolished shack. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
JORDAN VALLEY, Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jan 13 2014 (IPS)

Israeli settler Gadi Blumenfeld distributes machetes to 15 Palestinian labourers and instructs them to cut the thorns off of his dates’ fronds. “I might be stabbed in the back,” he says, “but thanks to farming, we keep the area safe from terrorists.”

Yet the fate of this arid strip of land that is home to 56,000 Palestinians and 7,000 settlers is uncertain as the rain.

A U.S. blueprint of a framework agreement for a two-state solution is said to put an end to Israel’s settlement enterprise in the Jordan Valley but to maintain an Israeli military presence for 10 years – contingent on the capacity of the future Palestinian state to protect not just itself, but Israel.“For this paradise on earth, we pay a heavy price. Settlements and military bases control our land."

Meanwhile, Blumenfeld prides himself on his dates – “fruit of our brains and their hands.” Israeli minds and Palestinian hands, he means.

In 2013, he produced 400 tonnes of prime Madjhoul dates from 5,000 trees which he planted on 400 dunam (400,000 square metres) since he settled in Patsa’el four decades ago. “We made the desert bloom, a miracle.”

Like Blumenfeld, Palestinian landowner Ameen Al-Masri, whose orchards are just a few kilometres away, is proud of his dates – “the mothers of the valley’s dates.” His farmland, he says is “Palestine’s most fertile off-season cash crops area.”

He owns the same amount of arable land as Blumenfeld. “For this paradise on earth, we pay a heavy price. Settlements and military bases control our land,” stresses Al-Masri.

After Israel captured the valley from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, tracts of land were expropriated from Palestinian farmers and allocated to settlements and military camps.

A segment of the Great Rift Valley, the Jordan Valley holds 28.3 percent of the West Bank’s land, and is the largest single Palestinian territory under full Israeli military and administrative rule, classified as Area C since the 1990s.

Only built-up areas – 13 percent of the valley – are under Palestinian rule, known as Area A.

Israel controls all the passages between it and the West Bank, and the border crossings on the Jordan River, the international border between the West Bank and Jordan.

Allenby Bridge is the only crossing to Jordan open to Palestinians from the West Bank.

“The Jordan Valley is a strategic buffer zone between a Palestinian state and Jordan. It must be kept under Israeli sovereignty because it prevents Jihadists, Al-Qaeda, Salafis from infiltrating Israel,” argues David El-Haiiani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, which includes 21 Jewish settlements.

On Dec. 29, days before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to the area to seek approval for his framework agreement, the Israeli government approved a right-wing legislator’s bill which, if voted in parliament, would annex the Jordan Valley’s settlements and access roads to them to Israel.

Palestinians reject any Israeli presence, military or civilian, in the valley.

“If we agreed to a 10-year military presence here, [Israel’s Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu would find an excuse on the ninth year to expand it for another 10 years,” is Al-Masri’s calculation.

Blumenfeld also farms a 200-dunam orchard in the closed military zone that lies between the electronic fence and the Jordan River. “Palestinian workers aren’t allowed in,” he notes.

Though Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, anti-personnel landmines are strewn along the fence.

In the late 1960s, the jagged terrain was dubbed “the land of hot pursuits” against Palestinian guerrillas.

Now peaceful, the no-man’s-land is a land of wolves and wild boars, of sentry boxes, outposts and trenches – of sentinels left behind in a distant past.

“We didn’t come here for ideological reasons, but to farm and secure the area. We’re farmers, not politicians,” says Blumenfeld.

“I’m a peaceful man, a farmer,” Al-Masri concurs. “Yet farmers fight for their land.”

Many Palestinians living here are semi-nomadic sheepherders and seasonal farmers. Most are wretchedly poor; most work land they don’t own.

“If you don’t work for settlers, you don’t work at all,” seethes a Palestinian picking bell peppers in Patsa’el. About 6,000 Palestinians work in settlements.

Sheepherder Ayman eDeis is homeless. His shack and sheep enclosure were demolished twice this year – last time just before winter.

“The Israeli authorities won’t give you a permit, not in a lifetime,” he says, standing on the rubble of his home.

Israel counters that the dearth of building permits stems from the valley being a sensitive security area.

A water reservoir is under construction in the closed military zone to increase the irrigation capacity of four Israeli reservoirs and 12 artesian wells.

Settlers get sweet water from the West Bank’s deep aquifer, from the Jordan River, from flash floods.

Palestinian farmers wait for the rain, making use of the seasonal Ein Shibli spring and four licenced artesian wells. They can dig only 400 metres deep into the shallow aquifer, where water is saline.

In 2013, settlers produced 11,000 tonnes of dates, mostly for export. Palestinians produced 2,000 tonnes, mostly for local and Israeli markets. “The best business in the world today is the occupation,” says Al-Masri.

A World Bank report estimates that if Palestinians could exploit Dead Sea minerals in the southern Jordan Valley, their economy would derive up to 918 million a year.

Access to more farmland and water would deliver a further 704 million dollars to the economy. The Jordan Valley could become a Palestinian breadbasket.

“I don’t want a state on paper where Israel controls our resources and borders,” says Mahmoud Daraghmeh, an unemployed Palestinian engineer who sows yellow beans in his family plot. “This isn’t freedom. This isn’t a state.”

Blumenfeld watches the myriads of migratory starlings freely overlooking the border. “I love this valley,” he exclaims.

“Yet for a real peace agreement which the whole world guarantees; for the end of terror – because in the past, terrorists took control of territories Israel evacuated – for end of conflict, I’m willing to pay the price.”

All that remains of a house demolished in Al-Jiftlick village in the Jordan Valley. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
JIFTLICK, Occupied West Bank, Sep 14 2013 (IPS)

In the Jordan Valley, contrasts are stark. Lush green agricultural fields and fenced-in greenhouses belong to the Israeli settlements that dot the landscape and benefit from the area’s abundant water supply on one hand. On the other, Palestinian farmers denied access to their lands and other resources by the Israeli authorities struggle to cultivate the most basic crops and make a living wage.

“It’s a struggle for the farmers,” Palestinian farmer Ahmad Said Moahri told IPS from his home in Jiftlick, a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley. “The farmers lose money sometimes by farming the land, but they cannot leave or Israel will take it.”

The 46-year-old owns 47 dunams (47,000 square metres) of agricultural land in Jiftlick. He harvests vegetables – eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, and more on 27 dunams, and rents the remainder to another local farmer.

While Moahri earns between 15,000 to 20,000 shekels (4,200 to 5,600 dollars) annually through farming, he said that for five months each year, between September and January, he takes on a second job to support his family: packaging Israeli dates at a factory in Massu’a, an illegal Israeli settlement near Jiftlick.“I love the land and our home is here ... There is not a day that I won’t visit, or look at, or take care of my land.” -- farmer Ahmad Said Moahri

“From the beginning, when the settlement was established, Israel gave them everything. There is no government support [for us], but in the settlement, there is,” said Moahri, who is paid 10 shekels (2.80 dollars) per hour, and makes between 12,000 to 14,000 shekels (3,400 to 4,000 dollars) each year from working in the settlement.

According to a report published by the Maan Development Centre, 1,800 dunams are allocated to agriculture in Massu’a, and the settlement produces eggplant, pepper, zucchini, cucumbers, watermelons, melons, and dates.

“The geographical location of settlements in the Jordan Valley has been determined by the important potential agricultural growth in the region. In addition, these agricultural settlements were established and maintained as export-oriented settlements,” Ma’an reported.

The Jordan Valley constitutes nearly 30 percent of the West Bank; 87.5 percent of this area is located in Area C, which falls under complete Israeli military control. Today, some 9,300 Israeli settlers and 65,000 Palestinians live in the Jordan Valley.

Palestinians are prohibited from accessing almost 95 percent of Jordan Valley, as half the land is being used by Israeli settlements, and the Israeli army declared another 45 percent as closed military zones, which are off-limits to Palestinians.

The Jordan Valley is known as the Palestinian breadbasket, as most of the West Bank’s arable land is located there. In a 2010 report, the World Bank stated that if Palestinians could access 50,000 more dunams of land and additional water resources in the area, they could earn approximately one billion dollars annually.

This economic potential is not lost on Palestinian, or Israeli, leaders.

As the “peace talks” between Palestinians and Israelis continue, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership has once again stated that the creation of a Palestinian state is impossible without control of Jericho and the Jordan Valley. “We are committed to that. We have said that more than once,” PA President Mahmoud Abbas said on Aug. 16.

The Israeli government, on the other hand, views the Jordan Valley as an important security buffer separating it from Jordan, and provides generous economic support to its settlements and settlement industries operating in the area.

In contrast, the PA government in Ramallah has done very little to support Palestinians in the Jordan Valley. The PA has never allocated more than one percent of its budget to the agricultural sector, and between 2001 and 2005, over 85 percent of that budget went to paying PA salaries.

The overall contribution of agriculture to the Palestinian GDP dropped from around 13.3 percent in 1994 to 5.7 percent in 2008, according to a report released by Al Shabaka, the Palestinian policy network.

“The support we get as farmers in the Jordan Valley is less than what we need. The government does not care about the agricultural situation. Agriculture was damaged because the (Palestinian Authority) neglected it. They didn’t change their strategy,” Moahri said.

Moayyad Bsharat heads the Jericho office of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which supports Palestinian farmers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He told IPS that because it is bound by the Oslo Accords agreement of the early 1990s, the PA is unable to support the most marginalised Palestinian farmers working in Area C.

“The first (solution is) to end the Oslo agreement. The solution in the Jordan Valley is political, 100 percent. We are talking about rights. The farmers want to go to their natural resources – the land, the water and the cultivation – and these things will not be done on the ground without a big political solution,” Bsharat said.

In the meantime, Israel aims to force Palestinians to leave the area, and exploits the resources and economic potential of the Jordan Valley, Bsharat added.

“The Israeli settlements have three million palm trees in the Jordan Valley, which gives yearly millions of shekels to the Israeli government. They have the grapes, flowers… all these things are exported. It gives it a lot of national income for Israel,” he said.

For farmer Ahmad Said Moahri, making a living from agriculture in the Jordan Valley is a struggle, but he sees his work as a form of resistance.

“I love the land and our home is here. For this reason, I cannot leave the land. There is not a day that I won’t visit, or look at, or take care of my land.”