Israel has drastically reduced the number of Palestinian farmers who are allowed to work their lands located between the separation barrier or wall and the Green Line according to Israeli official data.
According to Haaretz newspaper in 2018 72 percent of Palestinian requests for farming permits were rejected compared to 24 percent in 2014.
There are also very few permits issued for relatives of the plot owner who work with him and paid laborers.
This information was sent by the Israeli army’s civil administration to Hamoked—the center for the defense of individual human rights—in response to a freedom of information law request according to the newspaper.
However that information lacks valuable data concerning for example the number of seasonal short term permits which Hamoked believes often replace the long term permits.
The statistics correspond to reports submitted by farmers to Hamoked to Machsom Watch activists and to Haaretz about bureaucratic obstacles that have been added over the past four years to get the permits to cultivate their land.
The land between the barrier and the Green Line which Israel refers to as the “seam zone” totals 137000 dunums (33853 acres) a report released by Haaretz pointed out.
Since the start of 2018 through November 25 the civil administration approved only 1876 requests for farming permits of the 7187 requests submitted which constitutes an unprecedented refusal rate of 72 percent. This compares to a refusal rate of 24 percent in 2014 when the number of requests totaled 4288 and the number of permits issued was 3221.
Hamoked has been assisting farmers who are denied permits since 2009 said the obtained data confirm that “contrary to the high court of justice ruling that recognizes the residents’ right to work their lands with their families and employees the army is acting systematically to deprive the Palestinians of this basic right to restrict the entry of Palestinian farmers into the seam zone and to gradually dispossess them of their land.”
