Israel's Haaretz newspaper revealed that the Israeli army has destroyed hundreds of agricultural dunums in the Jordan Valley.
"Indigent farmers living in medieval conditions, without running water and without electricity, in the cold of the Jordan Valley winter, gazed forlornly at the machinery of destruction that had rumbled across their fields that morning in order to flatten them. They had done their plowing and sowing under unbelievable conditions," it said.
"Every few weeks, the Israel army swooped in to tear down their tents, confiscate their tractors and cars, smash the solar panels and water containers, and expel them for a day or two until the latest training exercise in their fields concluded."
"The farmers were used to that. What choice do they have? There is no resistance here, they are the weakest of the weak, their only hope here is to extract bread from the good earth," wrote Haaretz.
It continued that “what happened on Monday of this week was something new for them. Hundreds of dunams of cultivated land were crushed under the treads of the Israel Destruction Forces’ tanks, wheat fields became terrain for military maneuvers, furrows became flatland, and the fertile soil became a training ground."
"Five hundred dunams, maybe more, of loam soil that had been planted and tended, from which buds were already peeking out, turning the earth green, were reduced to a wasteland. The soil was heaped up for use as tank ramps."
"The vision was hard to bear. A bulldozer thundered back and forth, not missing a furrow, crushing the grain and the fodder, leaving destruction and desolation in its wake as it moved forward… One officer had brought his son, saying he was celebrating his birthday here…"
"What do these soldiers tell their families when they get back from their mission? That they had a good day, contributed to the country and its security by destroying crops?”
Haaretz added that "the devastation is already visible on the road to the village: fields brutalized by tank treads. The closer we get to the tent compound of the Turkman family, the more galling the sight becomes. Here it’s no longer fields across which tanks just passed; here it’s bulldozers that are ripping up the planted soil in order to build 'ramps,' as they refer to the mounds created to conceal the tanks that will arrive at night."
"The remains of the previous round of destruction are all around – hardest to bear of all are the solar panels that were crushed, the only source of electricity here. So there’s no running water and no electric power. So what."
"This is the home of the families of Mohammed Turkman, 58, and of his cousin, Adel Turkman, 46. Eight souls who are here for nine months of the year. The Turkmans work the land, but this is Area C – under full Israeli control – so they are not permitted to build anything.
Last month, on December 5, the Civil Administration again made expulsion orders: “Warning about mandatory temporary evacuation from a closed area.” In the past few months, they have been required to evacuate their tents seven times so that the Israeli army "could train in the area."
Haaretz said it had asked the army’s spokesperson about the destruction of the crops, and whether the army also conducts training exercises in the fields of the outlaw farms and outposts of settlers in the Jordan Valley. It received no response.
