Notification to stop work in residential and agricultural facilities in Khirbet Yarza / Tubas Governorate

April 6, 2020

• Violation: Notice to stop work.
• Location: Khirbet Yarza / Northern Valley.
• Date of violation: 06/4/2020.
• Perpetrator: the so-called Israeli Civil Administration.
• Affected person: Citizen Salem Abdel Rahim Masa’eed.

Violation details:

On Monday noon, April 6, 2020, the Israeli occupation army, accompanied by the so-called construction inspector of the Israeli Civil Administration, stormed Khirbet Yarza in the northern Jordan Valley where the family of the citizen Salem Abdul Rahim Muhammad Masaid, who lives in that area, was notified to stop construction of the dwelling that houses his family in addition to a shed for raising sheep adjacent to the residence, under the pretext of building without obtaining permits.

According to what was mentioned in the military notice, the occupation set the date of 5/5/2020 as a  hearing session of the “Subcommittee on Inspection”, which is based in the settlement of “Beit El”, to discuss what it called “demolishing the building or returning the place to its previous state.”

Picture 1: copy of Notice No. (00470) to stop work in the facilities of citizen Masaed

Photo 2: pictures of the threatened installations of the citizen Masaeed

Mr. Mukhles Masaeed, head of the Khirbet Yarza community, told the Land Research Center’s researcher the following:

 ” Khirbet Yarza is originally considered one of the oldest Palestinian ruins in the northern Jordan Valley, where it was over many years teeming with life and population and was flourishing with agriculture,. Ever since the military occupation of 1967  large parts of Yarza land have been  transferred in to military training zones and the last part of the khirbet known as the root of the hamlet has been transformed to government property, where the population suffers from repeated attacks by the occupation, which is trying to forcibly displace them and impose facts on the ground that are difficult to deal with in any way”.

 A glimpse on Khirbet Yarza:

Khirbet Yarza, located 10 km east of Tubas Governorate, specifically in the Baqi’a Plain region, is inhabited by about 12 families (100 citizens) who are remnants of their original inhabitants previously lived there in hundreds, and taking care of their lands which amounted to 25 thousand dunums, including,  283 dunums, classified under the name “root of the hamlet”, meaning an old inhabited area.  It is indicated that 75% of Yarza lands have been registered in the Land Registry records since the Jordanian era, in the name of the Palestinian inhabitants who own the land, but as a result of the occupation’s continuous oppression and racist practices many people were forced to leave to other adjacent places or to the town of Tubas.

Khirbet Yarza is considered one of the “closed military” areas by the Israeli occupation forces. Its lands, totaling 25 thousand dunums, are used as fields for Israeli military exercises, due to the nature of the mountainous and wooded area. On the lands of Khirbet Yarza, there is a training camp for the occupation soldiers called Camp Cobra. There are, also, dozens of training venues spread around here and there, which pose a real threat to the lives of the Khirbat residents. As an inevitable consequence of the existence of these camps, the locals suffer from remnants of the military shells that the occupation forces leave behind, in addition to besieging the hamlet from all sides and preventing the access of the minimum level of life services.