66 Israeli Land Grab and Forced Population Transfer of Palestinians Rasheed Sawafta - Al-Jiftlik, Jordan Valley225 I have been a volunteer in the Jordan Valley Solidarity Campaign for 6 years. The Jordan Valley Solidarity Campaign is a Palestinian movement that was established in 2004 and developed to become a joint Palestinian and international movement in which many volunteers, partners and friends from more than ten European countries are involved. We work exclusively in Area C of the Jordan Valley, which constitutes around 90 percent of it. In recent years, the Israeli occupation adopted a new land exploitation strategy by declaring huge tracts as closed military training areas, enabling them to expel people from their own homes and lands. Sometimes soldiers come and ask people to leave their houses for one day because of military trainings and in some areas the Military Commander imposed a status of "Firing Zones" under which people are under permanent risk of expulsion. For example, two months ago [January 2013], the residents of the communities Humsa, Al-Hadidiya, AlHamra and Ein Al-Hilwa were forcibly expelled from their homes from 06:00 to 06:00 the next day. Consequently, the residents had to sleep in the street in the night - I saw 4 year old children sleeping in cars. It’s important to note that the village of Ein Al-Hilwa is only 50 meters away from the colony of Maskiot and that the residents of this colony did not receive any evacuation order. If the trainings are dangerous for the Palestinian residents, aren't they for the Israeli settlers as well?! Closed Military Zones Beginning in the 1970s, Firing Zones, a form of closed military zones, have been extensively designated throughout the West Bank as one of many means of land appropriation or de facto confiscation of land. The majority of these closed zones are located in the Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills. The Israeli military employs Military Order 1651 to designate large swathes of land as closed zones under auspices such as ‘military training’ justifying this ‘necessary’ requisition of land. Under Article 318 of Military Order 1651: “A military commander is empowered to declare that an area or place are closed.”226 225 Rashid Khaled Sawafta, ‘The Village of Al-Jiftlik, Jordan Valley’, interview by BADIL, March 2013. 226 Order Concerning Security Provision (Judea and Samaria) 2009, 2009 This order is based on (No. 378), 1970, Article 90.