Confiscation of agricultural machinery and tractors in the northern Jordan Valley / Tubas Governorate

• Violation: confiscation of vehicles and agricultural machinery.
• Location: Northern Jordan Valley / Tubas Governorate.
• Date of violation: 01/06/2022.
• The aggressor party: The Israeli occupation army.
• Affected party: 13 Palestinian families.
• Details of the violation:

The Israeli occupation continues its campaign of harassment of defenseless Palestinian citizens in the Palestinian Jordan Valley, while the settlers continue to seize agricultural lands and close large areas of land in the area, and in conjunction with the so-called Civil Administration imposing strict restrictions limiting the Palestinian presence there, by demolishing homes and the displacement of the indigenous people, the closure of pastures, and the confiscation of equipment and vehicles, all with the aim of Judaizing the remaining lands of the citizens in that area.

The Israeli occupation army carried out wholesale violations on the morning of Wednesday, June 1, 2022, in a number of Palestinian sites in the West Bank, including the demolition of homes in Masafer Yatta, the destruction of an artesian well in Ras Atiya, the demolition of a house under the pretext of security in Ya`bad, and other attacks.

The occupation forces were not satisfied with this, but also confiscated private vehicles, agricultural tractors, water tanks, and mobile agricultural tractors; In several locations in the Jordan Valley, namely: The Al-Farsiah “Ahmir”, the Al-Farsiah “Ain Ghazal”, Al-Maita, and Aqaba. The equipment and the mechanisms are used in the normal daily lives of the Palestinian citizens, thus, the occupation army transported what was confiscated by special Israeli trucks to a camp belongs to the occupation army.

The occupation army handed over written records to the citizens entitled “A notice of seizure”, in which it claimed that the machinery and vehicles were confiscated under the pretext of their “illegal presence in the firing zone 900 – a closed military zone.” The following table shows the details of the confiscations according to the field follow-ups at the site of the violation:

Scenes from the confiscation of agricultural vehicles and machinery[1]

Mr. Mahdi Daraghmeh, head of Al-Malih Village Council, told the field researcher of the Land Research Center the following:

“What is happening now in the Jordan Valley is a very dangerous, as the occupation seeks to completely displace the citizens, and even prevents presence of them in most of the lands on the pretext that the land is militarily closed, as the occupation justified of the confiscation process”.

It is noteworthy that what is happening coincided with the initiation of expanding the influence of the settlement of “Selait” To the extent that the leveling of the lands and preparing it for construction which reached all the way to the residential tents in Khirbet Al-Farisiyah “Ahmer”, This is a very dangerous sign, as what happened today was expected in light of the occupation’s attempt to impose forced displacement on the population, and the expansion of the settlements there.

[1] Image source: Al-Malih Village Council.