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This summer, the Popular Committee of Fasayil, together with the Palestinian Save the Jordan Valley Initiative of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and the Brighton-Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group, started to build the first and only primary school in Fasayil, a village in the heart of the Jordan Valley. The grassroots project is part of a solidarity project between community groups in Brighton and Tubas region in Palestine.

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All of the ten people who have just returned from a delegation to Palestine from the Brighton-Tubas Solidarity Group, have their own unique stories to tell. In their two week visit they’ve been shot at, arrested, and discovered that produce grown on stolen Palestinian land and using child labour, is being sold in British supermarkets including Tesco’s.  One delegate said, “Although it was often shocking, these events are part of daily life in Palestine and the people we met were full of friendship despite their situation.”   (more…)

The village of Taybe lies about 10 kilometres inside the West Bank. Stand at the Boys’ School at the edge of the village and look towards the border and what do you see?

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Watching this school being built has been a fascinating process. The Palestinians decided to use more-or-less traditional building methods: using adobe (mud & straw- the local wattle and daub) bricks for the walls. It’s cheap in materials but hugely labour intensive. Earth and mud are mixed together by treading in the viscous stuff for an hour or so. Straw is then added and mixed in. This mixture is put into a brick mould, which is then removed (like a sandcastle from a bucket) and left for days to dry in the sun. Once the bricks are dry, they are stacked and cemented together with more mud. The process leaves everyone absolutely filthy, the mud sticks to clothes, skin and hair whilst we sweat profusely in the heat.

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How can I describe the experience of driving through the incredible countryside of the Jordan valley, only to have to stop the car to let a herd of gazelles pass? This was on the way to the village of Humsa, near Al Hadidya, that had had virtually every building destroyed by the Israelis, leaving them with nothing but a few canvas sheets to protect them from the sun.

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Latest News, Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, August 13th, 2007

On August 13 between 9 and 10 am, the demolition of the Bedouin village of al-Hadidiya in the Jordan Valley began. Two homes, belonging to Abdullah Hafez Yusuf Bani Odeh and Abdullah Hussein Bisharat, were destroyed along with nearby animal enclosures.

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Israeli Military Renders Twenty Palestinians Homeless, Confiscates Jordan Valley Land

For Immediate Release
Contact: Molly Simons
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Credit: Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. Date: August 8th, 2007.

Occupation forces today went on a spree of demolitions in the Jordan Valley, destroying four homes and two water tanks in Bardala, Sahel Libqeya, Frush Beit Dajan and Jiftlik.

The photographs taken at the scene today, below, vividly illustrate how the Occupation is attacking Palestinian lives and land.

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Arab MK slams ‘ethnic cleansing’ after demolitions in W. Bank

By Yoav Stern and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent

After Israel demolished structures in at least five Palestinian villages in the Jordan Valley in the last week, Hadash Chairman Mohammed Barakeh called on Thursday for an end to what he termed the “ethnic cleansing” in the area. Pools, tents and tin structures built without permits and belonging to Palestinian residents, were destroyed in the villages of Bakia, Jeftlik, Beit Dajan and Bardella, which are scattered along the Jordan Valley. (more…)

Latest News, Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, August 7th, 2007Today the Occupation forces have confirmed that they are preparing to evacuate the villages of al-Hadidiya and Humsa in the Jordan Valley, if necessary by force.

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