It’s not difficult to see where Michael Jansen’s sympathies lie writing in the Irish Times:
Israel’s grip on the Jordan valley makes life arduous for Palestinians farming the soil…
On the second floor of an old building, the words “Egyptian Arab Land Bank est 1880” bear witness to the town’s heyday as the centre of a thriving agricultural area at the very time European Jewish colonies were being established in Ottoman- and British-ruled Palestine.
Despite a continuous, uninterrupted Jewish presence in the region dating back thousands of years, Jansen evidently still sees Jewish settlement as a form of “colonization”.
As for the subject material of the article itself “Once fertile valley dries up as Jerichoans face drought and demolition”, it is clear who is responsible for the lack of water:
Along the broad Israeli highway, we speed past Israel’s fat caterpillar greenhouses and vast green palm plantations that are drinking up the valley’s water.
Unfortunately, while printing the claims of Palestinians regarding the situation of the Jordan Valley, Jansen didn’t even bother to contact the Israeli Civil Administration of the region or interview any Israelis living there for any counter-balance.
Jansen couldn’t even be bothered to expand on why Israel deems it necessary to maintain a security presence in the Jordan Valley – a current key demand of the Netanyahu government seeking defensible borders.
What a lazy and one-sided piece of journalism.
