Palestinian farmers fight Israel eviction threat

Al Hadidiya (West Bank), Feb 8: Al Hadidiya means ''iron-clad'' in Arabic, but the Palestinian farmers and shepherds who live on the rocky West Bank field that bears the name lead fragile lives.

Take Abdel Rahim Abu Sakar, a slight man in a flowing white keffiyeh headdress. His tents have been destroyed three times by Israel to try to force him, his three wives and 23 children to move elsewhere in the occupied territory.

The 56-year-old faces a new eviction order, which Israel plans to implement within two months, removing him and 20 fellow Bedouin tribe members from the field ringed by pastures where they have camped for decades.

Israel, citing security concerns, has tightened its grip in the Jordan Valley region where al Hadidiya is located, particularly in the past two years, Palestinian and Red Cross officials say.

Israel wants Abu Sakar out for security reasons, says Tsidki Maman, a spokesman for the military's civil administration in the West Bank: the encampment borders an Israeli army base, a firing range and a Jewish settlement.

Abu Sakar knows no other life than subsisting by corralling his sheep and growing lentils and barley in a field he has leased for years from Palestinian landowners.

He said he was once able to name a price for his sheep, but now must settle for whatever is offered by the few merchants who make it past Israel's checkpoints to his village.

However, he insists he will remain. ''Life here is very hard but we don't have any alternatives,'' he told Reuters.

''We will never leave,'' Abu Sakar said, as gunfire from a nearby Israeli army training base echoed across the hills.

No Access to Pastures

Israel has suggested the shepherds move from al Hadidiya, a village of makeshift sheds and tents in a valley near the West Bank's border with Jordan, to a more established town nearby, a military source said.

The shepherds are reluctant to give in to what Palestinians see as an Israeli land-grab, or risk being penned in by Israeli army checkpoints and cut off from the pastures and farmland they lease.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stepped in to try to mediate a compromise, after an Israeli court rejected the case for the last time in December.

''We try to intervene with the authorities to prevent such expulsions,'' Marcin Monko, an ICRC spokesman said, citing the organisation's role under the Fourth Geneva Convention to ensure proper treatment of civilians under military occupation.

Saleh Abu Hussein, a lawyer for the farmers, said the Israeli army had given them a deadline of April 10 to move or have their camp demolished again, arguing that the Palestinians had never obtained permits to live there.

Israel regards the Jordan Valley as a strategic asset, a gateway between it and Arab states to the east, and wants to keep control of the area under any peace deal for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Farmers' Complaints

Red Cross officials say Israel has significantly reduced the number of three-month permits it issues to Palestinians to access the Jordan Valley to graze their sheep, grow vegetables and market produce.

More than 40 percent of the valley zone has effectively been placed off-limits to Palestinians while Jewish settlements there have expanded, Red Cross and Palestinian officials say.

At least 1,000 farmers have complained to the Red Cross of difficulties obtaining passes to the region, a statement from the organisation adds.

Israel says its restrictions are designed to prevent Palestinian militants from launching attacks in an area that has seen violence during the Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000 when peace talks failed.

For Abu Sakar, Israeli restrictions compound the effects of an economic crisis in the West Bank in the past year spurred by a Western boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian government to put pressure on the militant group to recognise Israel.

He has slipped deeper into poverty, earning just 20,000 Israeli shekels (4,600 dollars) a year, barely enough to feed his large family. He cannot afford to buy or rent a home in a more permanent village as Israel would have him do.

A series of trenches dug by Israel and a metal gate that is usually closed have already made Abu Sakar's trip to the closest village for food, medical care and schools much longer than it once was -- two hours instead of about 20 minutes.

Over a plate of homemade goat's cheese and tea, he recounts how soldiers threw his family out of their home once in torrential rain, and dislodged them on another occasion in searing summer heat when his youngest child was four months old.

He points to the red-roofed houses of a neighbouring Jewish settlement, Beqaot, just a football field from his tents.

''These people have all the amenities they need. We don't even have running water. Yet they won't even let us keep our measly little tents on this land,'' he says.

Reuters