Land Research Center

• Violation: confiscating a spring of water and turning it into a park for the settlers.

• Location: Khirbet Al-Farisiyah, east of the northern Jordan Valley.

• Date of violation: 06/27/2022.

• The aggressor: a group of settlers from the settlement of "Shadmot Makhoola".

The affected party: citizen Raddad Hamed Daraghmeh.

• Details of the violation:

Khallet Khader, located to the east of Khirbat Al-Farisiyah, is considered one of the important agricultural and pastoral areas for the people of Khirbat Al-Farisiyah in the northern Jordan Valley, where the occupation strives to seize it and impose the sovereignty of the settlers there, in conjunction with the policy of emptying the area of its original owners. 

It is noteworthy that an extremist group of settlers took over on the morning of Monday (06/27/2022) a water spring in the Khallet Khader area, Where they put a metal fence around it, in addition to building a metal canopy of an area of 25 m², with a base of concrete, in addition to placing a sign in the place indicating the control of it and turning it into a tourist attraction spot belonging to the settlers, noting that the site is located at a distance of no more than 300 meters from the settlement "Shadmot Makhoola".

Mr. Mahdi Daraghmeh, an activist in the Jordan Valley, told the field researcher of the Land Research Center:

“What the settlers have done is considered a step towards formally imposing the settlers’ control over the site, even though the targeted land is (taboo) land owned by Palestinian farmers, and also, the spring is being exploited for the purpose of irrigating agricultural crops, as controlling it directly means losing an essential source to provide irrigation water to about 45 dunums which are planted with field crops. In addition, this step paves the way for the encroachment of that settlement towards the site, which implies that more than 200 dunums will be subject to settlement expansion activities in the immediate future”.

It is noteworthy that the targeted site is the same site where the farmer Raddad Hamed Daraghmeh used to live, he is the breadwinner for a family of (4) members, the husband and wife in addition to his two daughters. In 2019, he was displaced from his house, which he used to rebuild every time, but the harassment of the settlers made him move to a nearby site, and today the settlers are controlling the site and trying to change the features of the area in preparation for its complete Judaization.

 Refers to the targeting of Khallet Khader. The picture shows the Raddad Daraghmeh tent, which was targeted more than once

Khirbat Al-Farisiyah:

Khirbet Al-Farisiyah is located in the eastern part of Tubas Governorate, specifically in the Wadi Al-Maleh region, 20 kilometers from the city of Tubas. The lands of Khirbet extend from Al-Tayseer checkpoint in the west to the Jordan River in the east.

It has a population of 241 people, knowing that before the Israeli occupation in 1967, their number was more than 1,000 people, who depended mainly for their economic life on field crops and livestock.

The people of al-Khirbet come from the families of Bisharat, Dababbat, and Daraghmeh, from the city of Tubas and the town of Tammun. The people of the Khirbet Al-Farisiyah live in houses made of hair or iron plates.

Khirbet Al-Farisiyah was famous for the presence of its water springs and the fertility of its soil, which qualified it to be an attraction point for many farmers in the area and to become a major source of food for the northern areas of the West Bank.

It is noteworthy that Khirbet Al-Farisiyah was demolished several times by the Israeli occupation forces, as the residents were displaced many times, and the occupation refuses to license the Bedouin community in any way to live normally on its ground.