Members of Jordan Valley Solidarity including women and children have been supporting the Bedouin community since yesterday, staying overnight and sending in food, and water for the animals, as the members of the community cannot enter or leave.

Today Therezia Cooper, from the Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group, two members of the International Solidarity Movement, and other Palestinian activists are staying overnight in the tents of the Bedouin community, to give support and solidarity.

A spokesman for Jordan Valley Solidarity said: “We must help this community to resist and stay; if it is these homes being threatened today, it will be other tents tomorrow and the next day after that.”

He appealed to the Palestinian Authority to take up the case, and for the international media to publicise this latest attempt at ethnic cleansing by fanatical settlers.

This is not an isolated incident: Just 10 days ago on 15th April the Israeli army cut the water pipes to Al Farisiya, a nearby Palestinian community, cut to intimidate villagers, destroy their crops and make their existence in the Jordan Valley impossible. On 11th April the water supply to the Palestinan village of Bardala was cut off at the critical crop growing time.

Background info:

Information and requests for photos to:
Therezia Cooper 00972 597215876 (in the Jordan Valley, Palestine)
Ann Hallam 0044 7900321619 (UK)
Email:  brightontubas@gmail.com

Wesites with background information:
www.jordanvalleysolidarity.org
www.brightonpalestine.org

Maskiot was the first new settlement to be approved in the West Bank for over a decade when it was established as a residential colony in the middle of 2008. Located close to the Bedouin community of El Maleh in the Jordan Valley, it previously existed as a military out post but is now home to around 25 strongly Zionist families, most of whom used to live in the Gush Katif cluster of settlements in Gaza before the Israeli withdrawal in 2005. With a web-site declaring themselves pioneers wanting to “repopulate” the Valley, and with the stated aim to tempt Israeli business to come and trade from a new “Jordan Valley Business Centre” in the making, they pose a new kind of threat to the Palestinians who have lived in the area for decades.

Account of a RECENT visit to Maskiot from  http://www.brightonpalestine.org/node/611

“After being let through the gate by a bored soldier positioned there for “community protection”, we are met, not with a brave community of hardened Israelis living more or less without amenities as their propaganda would have you believe, but by picturesque little houses complete with solar panels and blooming gardens. Do they have internet connection there, we ask? “Of course”, comes the answer, “this is the 21st century”. On top of those permanent houses, however, there are also around half a dozen semi permanent caravans for newcomers.

“With the help of an organisation called CFOIC (Christian Friends of Israeli Communities) the settlement has planted an olive grove outside the gate, and inside there are signs for the One Israel Fund, an organisation which provide support for Zionist projects and want a permanent Israeli takeover of Gaza and all of the West Bank.

“Apart from the olive groves, the setters of Maskiot are also growing dates. “But not here”, they give away, “the date plantation is next to the Jordan River”. As the land adjoining the river is a closed military zone they had to get special permission from the army to be allowed to farm that land, and get military assistance when they need to visit it. Palestinians have not been allowed to access their land next to the river -the land the settlers are now using- since the occupation of the Jordan Valley in 1967.”