Supporting the agriculture livelihood of vulnerable farmers in Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and Tulkarem, governorates Palestinian farmers face many hardships including access to resources and hostilities from settlers and Israeli Occupation practices. Nearly 63% of farming land is in area C, and with the continued Israeli restrictions to land, water, and the increased settler attacks of farmers, their land and livelihood assets, puts them at great risk of loss of land and forced displacement. The continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements results in a furthered worsened humanitarian situation for farmers and families in Area C. The humanitarian situation for farmers in the targeted areas has been declining for many years, weakening their resilience, and with the onset of a disaster, farmers and their families use negative coping strategies in order to maintain their livelihood and afford basic commodities such as food and health care.

Farmers in Area C are among the most vulnerable particularly, demolitions and forced evictions deprive people of their homes and disrupt livelihoods, leading to entrenched poverty and increased aid dependency. They are further confronted by settler violence with the Ministry of Agriculture’s Agriculture Damage Documentation Department indicating that between 2016 and 2017 there have been over 500 occupational agriculture attacks on vulnerable populations, including farmers and their livelihood assets. In 2017 alone 156 cases have been officially registered with many still pending verification and entry into the database of the Ministry. The value of the destructive assets has, so far, exceeded 4.16 million USD in 2016-2017. There have been 192 documented assaults on agriculture assets in the targeted locations of this proposed project alone.

Within the FSS, ESDC works to ensure timely and effective response to demolitions to prevent forced displacement. The MoA provided list to include those who have had demolitions or damage to productive assets omitting livestock, which narrowed the list to 192 in the Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah governorates of which there is a clear gap in response at the same time, there are additional farmers that are not part of the MoA list that have yet to be entered into the system and the numbers are expected to increase. Also, through meeting with the MoA Project Preparation Department, we were able to confirm that there is a need for rehabilitating farming land and creating/rehabilitating agriculture roads for vulnerable farmers to be better able to access their land and improve their livelihood.

Also, farmers in the targeted area are in constant threat when accessing their lands due to limited and damaged agriculture roads and are hence prone to settler attacks from the nearby settlements. Farmers expressed the need for support in protecting their livelihood including agriculture land and roads, increasing access to resources as a result of destruction/and/or lack of accessibility.

498 farmers (98 filling the identified gap and 400 improved resilience of vulnerable farmers), and their families will benefit from the project in order to sustain their lands and agriculture livelihood. 
95 farmers will have about 270 dunnums of land/crop rehabilitation of demolished or damaged agriculture assets in addition to about 3 beekeepers. This emergency project will assist in filling the gap that has been identified for demolitions. The MoA identified this intervention as a top priority. The MoA database will be the base for conducting the verification however upon a detailed verification it is possible that will increase/decrease as per the verification at the start of the project. Any adjustment will be communicated with OCHA for approval.

10 km of agriculture roads will be opened or rehabilitated for about 400 farmers to improve access of to their lands and livelihood sources in order to build their resilience against occupational violence since agriculture roads will increase the number of farmers reaching their land and therefore the larger numbers will ward of