JORDAN VALLEYS, Wednesday, February 13, 2019 (WAFA) – An estimated 50 Palestinian families were forced to leave their homes in the Jordan Valleys at orders from the Israeli army to make way for military exercises in their area, said a local official.

Motaz Bisharat, the Palestinian Authority’s official in charge of monitoring Israeli settlement activities in the Jordan Valley, told WAFA that Palestinian families living in several areas in the northern Jordan Valley were forced to leave their homes for the second time in one week as Israeli forces carry out military drills with live ammunition.

He explained that approximately 300 Palestinians, more than half of them children and women, will have to live in the open for at least 24 hours as a result of the military drills that usually cause damage to the area and pose danger to residents’ lives.

He noted that military drills often result in the destruction of hundreds of dunums of cultivated land.

The Jordan Valley is one of the richest areas in the occupied West Bank almost all of it classified as Area C, under full Israeli military control. At least 44 percent of it is appropriated by Israeli forces for military exercises.

Palestinian residents of the Jordan Valley regularly face evacuation to Israeli military exercises on or near their homes.  They say Israel uses the military exercises as an excuse to eventually get them to leave their land in order to take it over to build Jewish settlements.

M.K.