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| File photo of a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley after an Israeli demolition in March 2012. (MaanImages/Eleonora Vio) |
Published yesterday (updated) 01/01/2013
AL-JIFTLIK (IRIN) -- For those who recently watched images of the Israeli bombardment in Gaza, the wide open hills of the Jordan Valley in the West Bank appear as a stark contrast.
Flocks of sheep accompanied by their herders cross the hillsides, home to some of the most fertile land in all of the occupied Palestinian territory and unrivaled even in Israel.
And yet despite the abundant land and resources, Palestinians living in the Valley are some of the poorest in the Palestinian territory, lacking even the most basic infrastructure.
The Jordan Valley is marked by a patchwork of zones in which Palestinians are allowed to live, which leave little room for manoeuvre.
"These restrictions have removed their ability to be self-sustaining. They are in an artificial humanitarian crisis; they have the capacity, the training, the education, but because of man-made restrictions, they are made vulnerable," Ramesh Rajasingham, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in oPt, told IRIN.
For a start, much of the Valley is officially out of bounds to Palestinians - 44 percent is marked as closed military zones (including so-called firing zones) and nature reserves. An additional 50 percent is controlled by Israeli settlements, regarded as illegal by many in the international community. That leaves only 6 percent for Palestinians, according to figures from Save the Children...READ MORE
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