On the ground in Palestine
BRIGHTON GROUP FORGES FRIENDSHIPS IN TOUBAS REGION returned from a fact finding trip to Toubas, Palestine.
They witnessed first-hand the impact of Israel’s occupation on the everyday lives of Palestinians in the Toubas Region, and as a result have now launched the Brighton Toubas Friendship and Solidarity Group. Below is their account of what they saw and the people they met.
Toubas is approximately 24km across and 28km north to south. It spreads from Toubas town, in the northern hills of the Israeli occupied West Bank, over to the fertile plains of the Jordan Valley. Traditionally people travel from the town to their farmland in the Jordan Valley. However, 95% of the land and 98% of the water in the Jordan Valley has been taken from the Palestinians since 1967 and is now controlled by the Israeli Army and Israeli settlers.
In Palestinian villages the people have lost nearly all their land and many have had their houses demolished. There is very little health care, education is limited, there are no phone lines or public transport and often there is no electricity.
The Jordan Valley can only be accessed via Israeli Army checkpoints, which Palestinians cannot go through unless they have a Jordan Valley ID (which are only issued to existing residents of the Valley). This is apartheid Israeli style.
At Al Quds Open University Campus in Toubas we met Raed and Firas. They both work in the fields and packing houses of the Jordan Valley settlements to be able to survive and pay for their education. On the days that they work they get up at 3.00am, to be bussed through the mountains and checkpoints to the Jordan Valley settlements with about 500 other settlement workers from the town. They have a permit to enter the Jordan Valley supplied by the Israeli settler they are working for. They work from 6.00am - 2.00pm, and for this they receive less than 5 pounds per hour.
The same day, we met the Toubas Palestinian Red Crescent Society. They have the only ambulance in Toubas region. They have constant problems of being held up at road blocks and checkpoints, with the ambulance often being stuck for hours. So far this year this has resulted in them having to perform two births at checkpoints, and 3 people have died because an ambulance could not get to them. We also met teachers, students, women’s groups, the prisoners society and farmers co-ops in Toubas who are isolated by the Israeli military occupation of the area, and really keen to establish links with organisations here in Brighton.
The Brighton-Toubas Friendship and Solidarity Group aims to make links between people at a grassroots level in order to give practical solidarity to the people of Toubas region who live under a brutal system of ethnic cleansing and to spread awareness in Brighton about the situation in Palestine.
If you want more information about what we are doing, or want to get involved please email us at: thewallmustfall@riseup.net