A visit to the shepherds from the Jordan Valley

Dan Shaish (of the Jordan Valley activists) and I went to Tzvia (who’s abroad now)’s house and borrowed her van in order to bring black and white nylon sheeting to Fawzi in the community of Samara in the north of the valley. The sheeting had already been bought back in January, but there was no one to transport it from the factory in Kibbutz Ginegar to the valley.

Fawzi wasn’t there when we arrived but his son Ahmed happily accepted the sheeting, which was promised to him 3 months ago when we brought one for his two brothers.

We stopped by Burhan's to see what was going on, because recently the settler M. from the farm close to him and A. from the illegal farm in Umm Zukka have been making threatening visits to him.

We passed through Humsa and brought 3 fans to three women of the families who had built their tents outside the military fire zone. On the previous visit we sat in one of the tents and thought we would pass out from the heat, the tent has no windows and the plastic boils in the unbearable summer months.

On the way back we encountered some Jordan Valley activists, and helped them change a tire.

We visited Mahmoud on the hill above the Hamra checkpoint, who nowadays cultivates grass that grows at a rate of 10 cm per day. This fast-growing grass manages to provide him with all the needs of his flock of sheep and thus he saved the expense of buying barley, which is especially high today because of the Russia-Ukraine war. It is amazing to see the height (almost human height) of the grass and the large amount it makes from a small plot of land.