The northern Jordan Valley…crops and pastures under the flames of training

Tubas - Ma'an - Farmers in the northern Jordan Valley area, which extends over an area of ??1.6 million dunums (nearly 30% of the area of ??the West Bank), fear the fire of the occupation, which at this time of year conducts intense military training, which ends every time with its fire consuming them. Their plains, pastures, crops, and farms are primitive and poor. Training exercises involving Israeli artillery and hundreds of soldiers armed with gunpowder, incendiary and flare bombs, and machine guns, as life there turns into something resembling hell! There, you can see with your own eyes the different lives of human beings of flesh and blood. Humans are accustomed to being attached to nature for fear of uprooting and for their love of places. The steadfastness of the simple people there, about 135,240 farmers, peasants and livestock herders, has a different meaning that you can see in the daily experience of people who record heroic deeds every day without noise or waiting for praise from anyone. In t he northern Jordan Valley, whose residents these days fear military training, farmers sleep with their eyes half-open, holding on to a thread of hope that the shells and flames of the military training will not reach their crops and homes. 'The occupation is taking off all its masks these days, and appears naked and hideous: displacement, shooting, demolition of homes and barns, and leaving hundreds of families out in the open,' said a farmer as he looked at the ears of wheat, swayed by the wind. With the official start of the rain-fed crop harvest season in the northern Jordan Valley, there are no signs other than the harvest's harvest: agricultural tractors pulling grain transport vehicles behind them, harvesting machines devouring wheat and barley crops, and herds of livestock swimming in the plains extending along the eastern strip of the West Bank. Gradually, farmers' harvest season for rain-fed crops is deepening, and this will remain so until the end of next June, at the latest. According to the fi gures reported by the Palestinian Information Center, the Israeli army camps, military bases, and training areas control about 3,962 dunams. At the beginning of May of each year, rain-fed crops and grasses in pasture lands begin to dry up, and as they dry out, it becomes easier for them to catch fire, especially amid high temperatures and the movement of military training in a geography that stimulates the occupation's appetite for using light and heavy live weapons. Last week, military exercises in the areas of Samra, Makhoul, Al-Maksar, and Humsa caused the burning of nearly two hundred dunums of rain-fed crops, and more than 1,600 dunums of pastoral land. Other fires broke out in pastoral and agricultural areas in other areas in the northern Jordan Valley, without knowing the main causes behind them. Deep in the northern Jordan Valley, many families depend on raising livestock, benefiting from the spread of pastures, rain-fed crop grains, and the resulting straw to feed their livestock. Perhaps the lo ss of that 'free' food due to the burning of large areas of that land (agricultural and pastoral), puts it in a real dilemma to provide fodder for hundreds of heads of livestock in the region, which is considered a renewed target for the occupation and colonialists' control over it. Livestock breeders in the northern Jordan Valley gave similar testimonies to Wafa's correspondent, in which they unanimously agreed that the rain-fed crops produced are a major source of free food provided to their livestock, which means continuing to remain in the Jordan Valley areas. There in the northern Jordan Valley, the matter is not limited to just one season. The area, which Israel considers an indispensable target, remains generous with military training throughout the year, and annually records days in which military training is violent. 'It is something that residents wait for every year... Whoever misses the harvest will not miss the training fire.' Someone said. The head of the Al-Maleh Village Council and the Bed ouin community, Mahdi Daraghmeh, says that last year, due to military training, the occupation burned more than 120 dunums of rain-fed crops and more than 15,000 dunums of pastoral land. The regions of Jabaris, Al-Shaq, Mufayeh, Samra, Khallet Al-Bad, Humsa, and East Ain Al-Hilweh were most affected by these exercises. Source: Maan News Agency