More than a dozen Palestinian Bedouin families were delivered evacuation warrants by Israeli authorities on Monday, ordering them to temporarily leave their homes for Israeli military drills.
Muataz Bisharat, Palestinian official who monitors settler activities in the Jordan Valley, told Ma’an that 85 people from 15 different families in Khirbet Ibziq north of Tubas in the northern Jordan Valley would have to evacuate.
He said the Israeli Civil Administration delivered the written warrants, which ordered the families to vacate for two days, yesterday and today, between 07:00 and 16:00 due to the Israeli military drills.
Palestinian residents of the Jordan Valley regularly face evacuations and interruption due to Israeli military exercises on or near their land. The district of Tubas, meanwhile, is one of the occupied West Bank’s most important agricultural centres.
Last month, Israeli forces ordered nine families in the Khirbet Al-Ras Al-Ahmar village in Tubas to evacuate their homes for two days in order for the Israeli army to carry out military drills in the area. Less than two weeks earlier, many of the same families were issued temporary evacuation notices for the same purpose.
Israeli military training exercises in the Jordan Valley have increased dramatically since 2012 and are one of many tools used to forcibly displace rural Palestinian communities, NGO Jordan Valley Solidarity says, part of a historic process of creeping annexation of the valley by Israel’s military.