Dr Abdellatif Mohammed, deputy general director of the Palestine Agricultural Relief Society, told Globalmeatnews.com that livestock producers and herders had suffered through the “closure of the majority of the grazing land” due to “unjustified security [measures], settlement expansion in the West Bank, [and] nature reserve development.” He said: “All of these factors have led to overgrazing and the deterioration of open grazing land.”
Bedouins living in the West Bank ‘C’ areas, mainly on Israeli settlements, and the Jordan Valley, have particular problems, said Mohammed. “Bedouins live there and, because of Israeli restrictions, they are deprived of any water supplies for their drinking purposes or for their herds’ needs. They are also not permitted to build any healthy shelters for their cattle as well as for themselves,” he said.
The deputy general director also said herders had to buy water supplies, with one cubic metre of water from tankers costing herders more than Israeli shekels ILS20 (US$5.41) on average, rising to ILS35 to ILS50 (US$9.47 to US$13.53) in the summer “depending on the distance from water supply”.
Disease
Meanwhile, the Palestinian livestock sector has been struggling with four outbreaks of bluetongue virus, with the Office International des Épizooties (OIE), the world animal health organisation, being warned of incidents in Tulkarim, near the northern end of the separation barrier between Israel-proper and the West Bank. The OIE has reported 36 cases, with 380 susceptible sheep and goats.
Dr Khawla Salem Njoum, epidemiology director of the Palestinian Authority’s agriculture ministry veterinary services general directorate, told the OIE the disease had been brought under control through quarantine, movement controls, screening, disinfection, killing midges carrying the disease and medical treatment.
A report released last June from the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) noted that the disease has become endemic and seasonal in the northern West Bank, with foreign breeds of sheep being particularly susceptible after the disease was initially found in imported cows.
Livestock herding
A recent European Union report on the Palestinian economy issed last September noted that livestock herding was an important source of income in the central and northern West Bank, with animals either grazed on pastures or on cultivated land after harvest.
It said particular problems were posed by farmers wanting access to the so-called ‘seam zone’ officially within the West Bank, near the border with Israel-proper and so cut off from most of the Palestinian territories.
Farmers are not allowed to bring livestock through gates that provide occasional access to this land, noted the report, causing many Palestinian communities, isolated by the barrier, to report “a substantial decrease in livestock numbers”.
Bedouins face particular difficulties as transient communities, many of them UN-registered refugees, according to a Palestine country report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It argued that having no formal land ownership rights, Bedouin communities living on the Jerusalem side of the barrier face acute hardship as they have no access to alternative grazing land in the rest of the West Bank.
This has caused a “devastating decline in their livestock due to limited access to rangeland and the high cost of commercial fodder as a replacement”, said the report.