Introduction to Khadouri:
Khadouri Agricultural College was established at the northwest of Tulkarm in the 1930s during the British Mandate in Palestine. The estimated area of this station is about 4000 dunums of agricultural plain. It lies 14 km east of the Mediterranean sea.
This Station includes, in addition to the agricultural land, cow, sheep and chicken farms. Also, it has educational buildings for the secondary agricultural school that played an important role in providing the Palestinian agricultural sector with technicians in various fields of agriculture. In 1948, Israel took over more than 80% of the Station land. After the 1967 war, the Israeli occupation authorities confiscated another 400 Dunums. See Map
It is worth mentioning that during the Jordanian administration, the agricultural school was transformed into Technical Agricultural Institute offering an associate degree (Diploma) in all agricultural sciences. After the Israeli occupation of 1967, the importance of this institute deteriorated, because the farms were out of order and became standstill due to the taking over of responsibilities by Israeli military authorities. They transformed the Agricultural Institute to an industrial one in order to destroy the agricultural station.
At the beginning of the peace process and following the establishment of the Palestinian National authority (PNA), the reactivation process of the agricultural station started by raising governmental and non- governmental funds for this purpose. For instance, the cow farm was repaired through an Italian organization in cooperation with the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) and the Land Research Center (LRC). This initiative encompassed the establishment of an information and agricultural advisory center, as well as a cow farm to enhance the new Palestinian cow breeds.
In another development, the buildings of this station became the campus of the College of Agriculture affiliated to Al-Najah National University in Nablus.
The Israeli military attack:
On 2/10/2001, the Israeli Occupation forces stormed Khadouri area after continuous shelling by tanks and artillery mortars. The following installations were destroyed in the offensive:
1. The cow farm and Advisory Center that is working under the supervision of MOA and LRC.
2. The Tulkarem Directorate of Agriculture affiliated to MOA.
3. The College of Agriculture Affiliated to Al-Najah National University .
4. The Technical Industrial Institute.
5. The Tulkarem Industrial School.
Damage and losses caused by the attack:
- The destruction of workshops belonging to the Industrial School and prevention of daily works at the school due to its location in the shelling range.
- The destruction of cow barracks and laboratory belonging to the Palestinian Center for Enhancing Cow Breeds. The dairy manufacturing unit, milking and infants incubation units, fodder store and fodder fermentation units were also destroyed. The estimated area of the destroyed site is 2000 m2.
- The destruction of the entrance of the college of agriculture.
- The destruction of a store belonging to MOA with an area of about 40 m2. It contains medical drugs, agricultural equipment and tools.
- The killing of 10 cows belonging to the college of agriculture.
- The uprooting of about 60 olive trees belonging to the agricultural directorate.
- The full destruction of the buildings of the Tulkarm Agricultural Directorate.
- The destruction of the Meteorological Station belonging to the Palestinian Ministry of Transportation.
- The destruction of parts of the ancient archeological walls of Khadouri Institute.
- The destruction of the water network attached to artesian well which has the capacity of 70 cubic meters of water per hour. It irrigates about 250 dunums belonging to the station. All the institutions established on the land of Khadouri benefit from this well.
New confiscation:
In the most recent violation conducted by the Israeli occupation army on 27/12/2001, 4 dunums from Khadouri station were confiscated and circled with fences before they were annexed to the DCO camp. Instead of being a place for coordination between the Palestinian and Israeli sides as its mandate stipulates, the camp has become in recent months a military base from which the Israeli army launches its continuous attacks against Palestinian towns and villages in the area.
Khadouri is paralyzed:
Currently, all institutions on Khadouri land are idle and empty because no one is able to approach due to its location in the shelling zone of Israeli tanks. In the first months of the current uprising, a student from the College of agriculture was martyred and tens of students were wounded. Temporary buildings for the College and other institutions were rented in other locations inside the city of Tulkarm. For more than a year Israeli tanks have been penetrating into Khadouri land to reach the western quarter of Tulkarem. The losses of the concerned institutions were estimated at millions of dollars.
Prepared by
The Land Research Center
LRC
