Clearing the Jordan Valley of Palestinians

[Clara T]

Clearing the Jordan Valley of Palestinians

Down the Explusion Highway

By AMIRA HASS

02/15/06 "Ha'aretz" -- -- Someone who apparently had an especially sarcastic sense of humor decided to officially name the Jordan Valley Road, Route 90, the "Gandhi Road." The reference is not to Mahatma Gandhi, but to Rehavam Ze'evi, who advocated "transfer"--the expulsion of the Palestinians from their land. Perhaps he understood that this was indeed the appropriate name for the eastern road. For not only on this road, but throughout the enormous and beautiful expanse of the Jordan Valley and the eastern slopes of the hills, there is an oppressive sense of absence, loss, and emptiness.

The Palestinians have disappeared from the valley, aside from a few thousand who live there plus some to whom Israel agrees to give daily entrance permits for various reasons. It is not even possible to include the approximately 35,000 residents of Jericho among those remaining, because the Israel Defense Forces forbids them to travel northward of Area A, where they live.

Thousands of residents of the neighboring towns and villages in the northern West Bank, which are sometimes only a few kilometers away, are absent from the valley, even though they have relatives and friends, privately owned land, houses, commercial ties and jobs there. Also missing are the Palestinian cars that in the not so distant past used to transport these absentees. Missing as well are the thousands of potential travelers to Jordan, the vacationing families and school students. These potential customers are absent from the colorful stalls at the crossroads.

Israeli soldiers control this absence via four principal checkpoints that divide the valley from the rest of the West Bank. They obey the orders of their commanders: It is forbidden for any Palestinian--in other words, some two million people (the 1.4 million residents of Gaza are already forbidden to come to the West Ba nk in any case)--to enter the valley, except for those whose official address, in their ID, is the Jordan Valley.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11933.htm

[Scurrilous]

1. Israel begins to squeeze Palestinians in the Jordan Valley

<snip>

"THE western floor of the Jordan Valley is dotted with rusting hulks of World War II tanks, their guns still trained to the east. Following Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, the army installed them as static strong points, insurance against any future attack across the heavily mined valley.

Having seized the West Bank from Jordan, Israel's army could now face its Arab counterparts along the natural defensive line of the Jordan Valley. The only threat to its rear was a few hundred thousand newly acquired Palestinian subjects, most of them obedient.

Four decades on, Israel is stronger than ever, and at peace with both Egypt and Jordan. Iraq will not threaten for a long time to come, and the end of the Cold War has deprived Syria of Soviet backing: its tanks are now little more use than Israel's cast-off Shermans.

But the Palestinians, who quietly accepted Israel's military occupation for the first 20 years, now number more than 3 million, and have been in revolt since 1987.

Today the Jordan Valley remains the world's deepest political fault line: Israelis and Palestinians claim alike that their states will not survive if they do not control it.

This week the Israeli human rights group B'tselem reported that the Israeli army is already imposing "de facto annexation" on the area by quietly implementing new controls on Palestinian movement and residency. The report came less than a week after acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that - along with East Jerusalem and heavily settled areas of the West Bank - the Jordan Valley would permanently remain "part of the state of Israel", with or without Palestinian consent."


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[Tom Joad]

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