TUBAS, November 13, 2016 (WAFA) – Israeli forces on Sunday ordered 10 families in the Khirbet Ibzeiq area in the occupied West Bank district of Tubas, in the Jordan Valley, to evacuate their homes to make way for Israeli military drills in the area.

Aref Daraghmah, who monitors Israeli violations in Tubas, said that Israeli forces informed the 10 families, mostly from the Turkman clan, they needed to leave their homes on Sunday in order for the Israeli military to carry out military drills there.

Daraghmeh added that in accordance with recent military orders, other families in Ras al-Ahmar area, nearby, are also due to leave their homes on Sunday and Monday for similar military drills.

Palestinian residents of the Jordan Valley regularly face evacuations to Israeli military exercises on or near their land. The district of Tubas is one of the occupied West Bank‘s most important agricultural centers.

Almost on a weekly basis, Israeli army orders Palestinian Bedouins, residing in the Jordan Valley, to leave their homes to make way for live-fire trainings.

Many Palestinians in the Jordan Valley see military exercises in firing zones as well as repeated house demolitions as an Israeli strategy to empty the land of Palestinians and confiscate it for further settlement expansion and agricultural production.

In May 2014, a senior Israeli army officer reported that military training in live-fire zones in the West Bank “is used as a way of reducing the number of Palestinians living nearby, and serves as an important part of the campaign against Palestinian illegal construction.”

Col. Einav Shalev also described the Israeli army policy of confiscating humanitarian equipment destined for Palestinians whose homes have been destroyed as ‘a punch in the right places‘.

M.N