Fassayil, Jordan Valley: the villages are under siege and the severe hunger is crippling families
We drove Maryam to Turmus Aya Hospital to receive injections in her eyes as we have been doing every month for the past four years. The injections have renewed her sight after she became blind.
On the way we passed the entrance to Maayanot A week ago we met Hagar with three shepherds and their flocks near Fassayil. Today there were no shepherds present We don’t have enough escorts to provide protection for all the shepherds and without Israeli escorts none of the shepherds dare to go to the places where there is grass because the settlers evict them.
After a few hot dry days the green grass has disappeared and turned yellow.
We checked several entrances to villages that have been barricaded until now. The entrance to Duma has been opened . There were huge boulders on the side of the road that were left from the barricade that had been removed. The entrance to Kusra, on the other hand, was closed with a locked red gate. The entrance to Isawiyyeh was also blocked with boulders. How can people live when they are blocked from going out into the world?
There were a tremendous amount of patients at the ophthalmology hospital in Turmus Aia. There were long waiting lines and noise and confusion. Despite the new modern building the treatment was reminiscent of the 1950s. Patients register with a piece of paper and a nurse calls patients for treatment while walking up and down the hallway. The place was chaotic.
After Maryam’s examination we went into the village to purchase the medication that the doctor had prescribed. ON the way Maryam complained that her family had no food and were desperate. They needed vegetables, tomatoes, onions, and garlic, We went into a vegetable store to buy vegetables for the family. The owner approached me as I was selecting tomatoes and asked where I was from. When I told him “from Israel”. He raised his hands in a gesture that meant “stop” and he refused to sell us vegetables and asked us to leave. Evidently he thought that we were from the neighboring settlement of Shiloh, whose members had killed a resident of the village a year ago and burned 30 cars and homes in the village. We explained that we were buying food for a Palestinian woman who had remained in the car, and he then helped us choose vegetables and helped us carry them out to the car. This was the first time that a Palestinian had ever strayed from the rules of hospitality and attempted to evict me. Evidently they have reached the end of their patience and were overcome with anger and frustration. I understood him completely. It is harder for me to understand a Palestinian who receives me with hospitality after Israelis have killed his son or set fire to his home.
After we returned Maryam home her husband came outside and we planned how to distribute food packages that had been donated by Rabbis for Human Rights. Their representative will bring packages on Wednesday and Musa will direct him to 70 families who are the most needy. The packages contain flour, sugar, tea, rice, oil, noodles, and other items. After six months of closure villages such as Fassayil where people earn their living by tending sheep are suffering from hunger. Violent settlers from the nearby settlement (ironically called Malachay HaShalonm, the angels of peace) prevent them from herding their sheep and workers who had jobs in Israel can no longer earn a living.
Fasa'il
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An old community of shepherds in the Jordan Valley that is located between settlements and is exposed to the demolition of its residential buildings at times by the army and the abuses of the settlers. King Herod founded the city of Fatza'elis in 8 BC, and named it after his older brother, Petzal. The permanent settlement in the place began with Bedouins who migrated to the area as early as the 1950s after being expelled from the Tel Arad area. Over the years, additional Bedouin residents who were expelled from other places in the Jordan Valley joined. Areas that were declared as fire areas or state lands . As part of the Alon plan, a significant part of the lands in the area were expropriated and four Israeli settlements were established on them: Tomer, Gilgal, Fatza'el Netiv HaGdud. Illegal posts were erected over the years. Some of them were authorized during the 7th October War.
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Turmus Aya
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Turmus Aya is a beautiful and well-kept Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bira governorate, located in the Shiloh Valley, about 22 km north of Ramallah. Near Highway 60 at an altitude of about 732 m. In 2016, 4,781 residents lived in the town. After the 2nd intifada in 2001, hundreds immigrated to the US, but they come in the summer to visit their families and live in the nice houses they built.
Israel expropriated 752 dunams of the town's land for the establishment of the Shiloh settlement, in 1978, and another 372 dunams for the establishment of the Shebot Rachel settlement in 1992. According to the Oslo Agreement, the built-up area of TAos Aya was classified as area B. This area constitutes 64.7% of the town's land, and the rest, 35.3%, is area C.
Starting in 2015, the town's residents often suffer from harassment from the settlers of the Adi Ad outpost, which include the uprooting and cutting of olive trees, the burning of wheat fields and the spraying of anti-Netzka inscriptions.
On June 21, 2023, dozens of young people from outposts and surrounding settlements carried out a pogrom in broad daylight after the funeral of the victims of the attack that occurred two days earlier at the gas station in the settlement of Eli. The attack took place after the Israel Defense Forces' invasion of Jenin and the killing of innocents in the process - an invasion that took place after a previous event... and so on, deep into the non-stop blood equation that is always presented in Israel as terror attacks without context. They set fire to about 60 cars and about 30 houses with their occupants and threw stones, fire grenades and even shot from guns.The IDF soldiers watched the attack but didn't intervene. A villager was killed by soldier fire. Only 3 settlers were arrested after a few days, but charges have not yet been filed against them.
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