RAMALLAH, West Bank — Ahmad Hassan Daraghmeh and his family were preparing to reap chickpeas from their farm when the Israeli army showed up March 8 and destroyed the crops, ostensibly because the soldiers needed to conduct military drills for two weeks.

“After the military dredges were done with sweeping the chickpeas, tracked vehicles and heavy military vehicles raided the land — and then came the infantry," said Daraghmeh, who is from Khirbet al-Farisiya in the northern Jordan Valley. He has worked in agriculture for 30 years and provides for eight family members. Some 12 acres of crops "were completely ruined," he told Al-Monitor.

Daraghmeh now has to work for a farmer in exchange for a daily wage to reduce his losses. “I have incurred 120,000 shekels [$34,000] in losses," he said. Officials at the Tubas governorate's Department of Agriculture, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture, aren't interested in resolving farmers' losses, he added, though the ministry disputes that claim.

The Israeli army started wide-scale drills March 7 in that part of the West Bank. It evacuated 16 families comprised of 80 members from their houses, saying that the soldiers needed to conduct the drills from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.