Palestinians are fighting to dismantle apartheid, not just annexation
If you ask Palestinians in the Jordan Valley how they feel about annexation, many will say that they were already annexed long ago.
By Salem Barahmeh June 29, 2020 - +972 Magazine
▻https://www.972mag.com/jericho-annexation-jordan-valley-apartheid
The view from my grandparents’ house in Jericho, the city where I grew up, looks on to the mountain ridges of the Jordan Valley that thunder down into the Dead Sea. Over the horizon of those mountains, from a Mediterranean Sea that lies beyond my reach as a resident of the occupied West Bank, would come the most beautiful sunsets. I always wondered if my ancestors, who lived on the same land, enjoyed this view as much as I did.
My family, the Barahmehs, are one of the indigenous clans of Jericho, their roots in the Jordan Valley going back centuries. Yet from an early age, I — like my father and grandfather — realized that the valley no longer belonged to “us.”
Shortly after our occupation in 1967, Israel began building settlements like Mitzpe Yericho, Yitav, and Kalia around Jericho and throughout the Jordan Valley, where they have grown and remained to this day. These colonial and expansionist policies did not begin with the Likud or other right-wing parties, but with the Labor Party. Such land theft and annexation have always been a central part of Israel’s institutional identity, cutting across generations of Palestinians. (...)