[R-G] An Unholy Land Grab: The Story of a Palestinian Farm and Settlers

[Richard Menec]

Dear Readers:

The following special report exclusive to PalestineChronicle.com is written 
by Janine Roberts. Roberts investigative features have been widely published 
in the major Australian newspapers as well as in the Independent and 
Financial Times in the UK. Her investigative film "the Diamond Empire" was 
shown on Frontline WGBH in the USA and on the BBC - it was researched partly 
in Israel.

Thank you for your kind support in 2007.

Our best wishes

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/


PALESTINECHRONICLE.COM FEATURE ARTICLE

An Unholy Land Grab: The Story of a Palestinian Farm and Settlers

By Janine Roberts Special to PalestineChronicle.com

No matter what was promised in Annapolis, a Two State Solution for Israel 
and Palestine now seems utterly impossible, judging from what I have just 
seen during a 3-week visit to the West Bank.

Its hills, terraced with olive groves, are now totally dissected by 
fortified highways and crowned by luxurious illegal housing developments - 
the latter occupied by nearly a half a million Israelis. Seized Arab land 
has clearly provided a bonanza for investors who think their money secure. 
What remains is a shredded West Bank from which it will be near impossible, 
in my view, to construct anything truly independent of Israel.

I went to the West Bank at the invitation of a Fair Trade Palestinian olive 
oil company, Zaytoun.  I expected a healthy break from chilly English 
weather; to pick olives, eat with farmers and learn from them how 60 years 
of military occupation has affected their lives.  But it turned out to be 
far more dramatic a visit than ever I had envisioned.

One morning I went with three olive pickers to help Omar, a Palestinian who 
farms in the northern part of the West Bank. Leaving our car on what was 
then a quiet main road, we met him on the farm on which he had 250 olive 
trees.  The police just evicted the Israeli settlers who had illegally 
occupied it. They had done so at the behest of a judge who ruled in favour 
of the Palestinian owners of this farm of fig, olive and almond trees. It is 
managed for her family by the 61-year-old Dadriya Amar who lives, as does 
Omar, in the local Palestinian village of Kafr Qaddum. She had filed her 
complaint when the settlers first occupied the farm in October. This led to 
the eviction of the settlers by the army - not once but three times. But 
every time they were expelled, the army did not stop them from returning 
hours later. When she came to pick the olives, the settlers had chased her 
away with stones.

We had not yet started picking the olives when suddenly a large armoured 
army truck arrived and soldiers massed by the farmhouse. They clearly had 
foreknowledge of something about to happen - and sure enough, a bus load of 
Israeli settlers minutes later disembarked and charged to the farmhouse. 
However it was a gentle, almost ritual, clash.  No tear gas, no arrests. 
The settlers retired after some pushing and chatting with the soldiers. The 
army then declared the farm a 'closed military zone' and we had to leave.

It was only when we started to drive away that we realised our front tires 
had been slashed. The young settlers waiting nearby for us to discover this, 
jeered and laughed and came towards us. My companions ran back to ask the 
army to protect us while nervously I stayed with the car.  The youths that 
then surrounded the car were all wearing the tzitzit, the tasselled 
under-shirt of Orthodox Jews.  But there was nothing religious it seemed in 
their behaviour. I was seriously scared. I feared they would discover that I 
could not lock my doors. Stories of Palestinian cars torched by settlers 
came back to me. Our crime seemingly was that we had just spoken to the 
Palestinian farmer.

When my companions returned minutes later that seemed like hours, I learnt 
the army had refused protection on the grounds that we had driven a few feet 
out of their 'military zone.' They said we were now the responsibility of 
the absent police. When passing motorists slowed to ask if we needed help, 
the settlers ordered them not to stop.

When a police armoured jeep approached we thought we were safe, but a 
policeman said; 'We don't speak English' and drove on. But ten minutes later 
they returned. This time they mounted an armed protection of us, ordering 
the settlers off the road, guarding us until a tow truck arrived.

But that night the army and police withdrew from the farmhouse, just as they 
had done after every other eviction, and the young settlers reoccupied it as 
they had done every other time, planting the Israeli flag upon its rooftop. 
The army evicted them once more but the settlers again returned at night. 
Two days later the farmhouse had a Hebrew sign on it, the settlers were 
picking Omar's olives and wires strung to the farm from Mitzpe Ishai, the 
Jewish settlement across the valley that is part of the larger illegal 
Israeli settlement of Kedumim (also spelt as Qedumim), to make the farm part 
of an 'Eruv,' a Rabbi-authorized area in which Orthodox Jews can travel to 
and fro on the Sabbath. Normally this requires permission, a 'kinyan kesef,' 
from landowners but apparently not in this case. The farm was also renamed - 
it was now "Shvut Ami," meaning 'The Return of the People.' There was 
however one very small victory for Omar. He used photographs we had taken to 
persuade the police to arrest one of the settlers for stealing his olives. 
He got a bucket of his olives back. This was a very small return for losing 
the many sacks of olives produced by 250 trees.

Thus we witnessed another small part of the West Bank passing into Israeli 
hands. The farmer Omar swore he would never give up but with nine children, 
and access to several hundred olive trees lost, the task had just become 
much harder.

We soon discovered that behind this occupation were the guiding hands of 
Daniella Weiss, a former Mayor of Kedumim to which the farm had now been 
added as an 'eruv' - and joined to its water mains. The New York Times has 
called her "one of the leading ideologues of the outpost movement."   The 
settlers documented their takeover of the farm by posting videos to U-Tube. 
These showed a Rabbi leading rituals at the farmhouse with Weiss prominently 
in attendance.

After the Annapolis conference, the Israeli National News reported: 
'Daniella Weiss, the head of the Kedumim regional council  . stated this 
[the West Bank] is holy land that is temporarily inhabited by non-Jews.' The 
Guardian also reported, in an interview published on June 5, 2007, that she 
believed the land of Israel should be the Biblical Promised land, stretching 
from the Nile to the Euphrates.  She also warned, in an interview published 
in the Washington Post: 'Anyplace in Israel where we do not reside, is the 
home of terrorists.'

She now stated: 'Most of the people singing peaceful Shabbat songs in the 
new settlement of Shvut Ami didn't know much about Annapolis - its location 
or its agenda. They did know that their persistent hold on the new hill west 
of Kedumim in the heart of Shomron [Samaria] will affect politics, will 
affect the Israeli agenda and will have a lasting influence on the morale of 
Israeli society.' She reported that that, simultaneously with its 
occupation, some five other outposts were being established. All these are 
illegal under international law for military occupations.  Much of Kedumim 
itself is built on land confiscated from Kofr Qadum - although some was part 
of a pre-1967 Jordanian army base. When we went to stay in Kafr Qaddum to 
help with its olive harvest, we soon discovered it had no regular 
electricity, despite having a generator since 1999, installed as a gift of 
the Belgian government.   The Israelis will not permit its use since it is 
sited 'too close' to the Israeli settlement of Kedumim - a weak excuse as 
this is a quarter of a mile away! This action has crippled the local 
industries. We went to see the site of the unused generator and found it is 
in a building adjacent to the houses of the village - on the former main 
road to the regional capital, Nablus; also out of use since 2000 since it 
passes through a new extension of Kedumim. It seems to be Israeli policy to 
only allow Palestinian villages and small towns a single road into them - 
for this makes it easy for the army to isolate them.

The next day we went to pick olives there, to our disappointment the Israeli 
army came to stop us - on the grounds that they were evicting the settlers 
from the previously mentioned farm and that this might make the settlers 
angry enough to attack us.  The farmer had an Israeli permit to pick for 7 
days - but needed 20. He also knew he might not be able to come back next 
year - for the Wall is planned to permanently cut him off from his trees.

His land was rich - bringing in a summer crop of wheat as well as olives in 
the autumn. It will be stolen by Israeli settlers despite being in a quiet 
valley 7 miles inside the legal boundary of the West Bank. Kafr Qaddum's 
Deputy Major told us: 'The wall will cut us off from about 35% of our olive 
groves. We will do everything to stop them building it.' The Israelis 
planned to build the wall through the olive groves alongside the town hall. 
It was going to be a tough fight.

Omar, to illustrate that the wall is essentially a 'land-grab,' took us to 
visit nearby Qalqilya, a sizeable West Bank town already closely encircled 
by the Wall with only one main entrance allowed into it, one with a 
checkpoint adjacent to an Israeli army base. It was a rich market town - but 
its fertile lands now lie beyond the wall and are now used by Israeli 
farmers. The nearby town of Jayyus has similarly lost 68% of its lands to 
Israeli farmers. UN aerial photographs show the greenhouses beyond the wall 
that Palestinians can no longer use.

Today Kedumim with just over 3000 Jewish settlers is equal in size to Kafr 
Qaddum - although the latter has many empty houses from which the owners 
fled at the time of the Israeli invasion. The Israelis will not allow them 
to return to live on the West Bank - but the village elders ensure their 
homes are kept ready for them.

On our last visit there we found much harder to get into Kafr Qaddum. The 
remaining main road into it, the bus route, had just been blocked with a 
high rock and earth wall by the Israeli army. The villagers dug it away at 
night to let the buses through - but after our visit the army returned to 
make it impenitrable. It now takes the residents some 3 hours to get to 
Nablus, including the time needed to walk the fields past this blockage and 
pass through army checkpoints. It used to take 20 minutes.  Olive pickers 
from overseas who had been coming here for 3 years told me they had observed 
the situation for the Palestinians sadly deteriorating every year.

A few days after our visit, the army again temporarily evicted the settlers 
from the farmhouse. This time it was reported that 'right wing activists at 
Shvut Ami caused damage to two police cars.' The police arrested 32 of 
them - but apparently soon let them go. They reoccupied the farmhouse and 
pinted it pink - and up went the small orange flags marking the wire of the 
'eruv' making it one with the nearby Jewish colony. The road passing by the 
farmhouse became littered with stones thrown at Palestinian cars by the 
squatters at the farmhouse, according to Zakaria Seda of nearby Jit. 'The 
settlers threw stones from five metres above the road' smashing car windows 
and causing injuries. They could tell the Palestinian cars because they have 
green number plates. Israeli cars have yellow plates and pass through 
checkpoints with scarcely any need to slow down. (as we found with our hired 
car.)

Then the mounting Palestinian fury and frustration took its toll.  A 
29-year-old Israeli, Ido Zolden, was killed in a drive-by shooting. He had 
links with the seized farm and lived at Kedumim, building settlement homes 
'throughout the West Bank' according to the New York Times.  He was shot on 
the Qalqilvah-Nablus main road between the seized farm and the Arab village 
of Funduk where our slashed tires were replaced. The Al Aksa Martyrs 
Brigades, a militia affiliated with the mainstream Fatah movement, claimed 
responsibility for the attack. Apparently it had been the only such attack 
in this area in recent months.

In the UK, the lobbying group 'Labour Friends of Israel' reported this 
incident in its regular briefings to Prime Minister George Brown - but they 
did not say what happened next.   'Hundreds of settlers rampaged, smashed 
windows, demolished cars, destroyed a lot of property', according to Feras 
Beileh, the mayor of al-Funduk. Some 18 cars had their tires slashed. The 
townspeople reported that some 400 settlers were involved - and members of 
the army. Beileh added: "I understand very well why the settlers were angry 
at the killing of their fellow, but they know very well that his killer did 
not come from Funduk. [the police had already established this] They 
attacked and caused an enormous damage, just because we are Arabs who happen 
to live near the place where it happened.'

The owner of a local marble factory, Hani Salman, reported. 'Settlers broke 
in and started to smash marble slabs - the most expansive kind, imported 
from Italy, costing between 130 and 150 dollars apiece.' He watched while 
'besieged in the factory office' and saw 'a settler girl, 17 or 18 years 
old, tried to push over a marble slab and smash it, but it was too heavy for 
her. Then soldiers smashed it for her.'

Gus Shalom, an Israeli peace organisation, investigated and reported: 
'Throughout the pogrom, soldiers demanded of the villagers to remain in 
their homes and threatened to shoot anyone who would go out. The owner of a 
carpentry told: "We live above the workshop. The settlers broke into the 
lower floor and intended to set the woodpiles on fire. We might have all 
been burned. My wife was hysterical with panic. I was arrested and kept in 
detention for four days, just because I tried to protect my wife and 
children. Now my wife went back to her parents' home in another village, she 
is afraid to come home because she thinks the settlers might come again.'

But the most terrifying of the threats made that night was not reported 
until Gideon Levy, a writer for the Haaretz newspaper, spoke to Naama 
Masalha whose home in Funduk was 'stormed' by the settlers when she was at 
home with three young children.

While the settlers rampaged, she hid with her children in the bathroom. Her 
brother Mohammed managed to join her - and recorded on his phone what the 
settlers were shouting. Levy reported: 'Now he plays the recordings for us: 
"Erase this village - erase this house," one can hear a woman screaming in 
Hebrew, in a hoarse voice. And then one hears the sound of blows. The 
soldiers and policemen stood by and watched. The woman continues to scream 
on the recording: "People of Funduk, pay attention: You will suffer, this 
village is erased. In blood and in fire, this village will be erased. Come 
out, come out of your homes." The settlers had sticks and iron poles in 
their hands and were smashing windows - but none were arrested. On the 
contrary, Levy reported the settlers were protected and assisted by the 
army.

Two days later the police reported they had arrested the men suspected to be 
responsible for the shooting. They were Palestinian policemen resident at 
Kfar Kadum, a township of 4200 inhabitants, bigger than Kedumim, but with 
access only over hillside tracks. A hundred settlers set off on foot from 
Kedumim to carry out a similar revenge attack there - but what happened next 
seems to be unreported.

There has long been tension between these towns. Kedumim was illegally 
founded on the only paved road to Kfar Kadum and settler security guards 
have for years prevented traffic from passing through to this Palestinian 
town. After the killing the army imposed a total curfew over the local 
Palestinian towns and villages region - including Kafr Qaddum, so that no 
one could leave their homes for days.  The army also carried out town 
patrols every night during which they throw 'sound bombs' that woke up all 
the children, terrifying them. They also sealed more of the roads used by 
Palestinians - but not the track to the stolen farmhouse; now painted pink 
by the settlers.

The al-Funduk Town Secretary, Jaber, declared: 'Collective punishment is not 
just. We have children, wives, infants, ill and elderly people. If they want 
to arrest someone, let them. To close off Al Funduk is to close off 
one-third of the West Bank. All the traffic between the north and the center 
of the West Bank passes along our road. It's the only road. We hear every 
day about the peace process, but on the ground we don't feel a thing. When I'm 
in my house and they come to demolish my home and my car, what should I do?'

Omar Shari, a local contractor whose tractors were badly damaged, added: 
'The settlement of] Kedumim has been here for 20 years, and it wants to 
dominate the entire area. It's the army that allows the settlers to 
dominate.' About 500 people live in Al Funduq. It is a village that has not 
suffered any casualties and is almost without prisoners in Israeli jails. It 
is home mostly to stonemasons, grocers and garages that serve both the 
settlers and the Palestinians in the area. But Shari had a warning to give: 
'There are no shaheeds [martyrs] in Al Funduk, but [after] what they're 
doing now to the children, in another 10-15 years, when they grow up - you'll 
be hearing what happens here.'

The main food store here, the one where we did our shopping while at Kofr 
Qaddum, has long stocked kosher food for the settlers who buy on credit - 
but after this rampage most of them are staying away. The shopkeeper, Sakr 
Bari, suspects that many of his Israeli customers had taken part in the 
rampage. A new road block has now been installed by the army - blocking 
traffic past the auto-repair shop in the neighbouring village of Jinsafut. 
No one in this village knows why they are being punished. It seems to have 
been picked out at random.

Everywhere I travelled around the West Bank, from Nablus in the north to 
Hebron in the south, from Jerusalem to Jericho, I heard much the same. 
Israeli's army aggressively patrols every Palestinian town and village 
seemingly at least once a week - and everywhere the Israeli settlements were 
busily expanding and establishing new outposts on Palestinian agricultural 
lands.

They have now occupied strategically chosen areas through out the West Bank. 
Keddumim boasts of its own position on its website, saying its settlers have 
seized the tactical high ground overlooking routes from the Jordan towards 
Tel Aviv. In October this year the UN reported that over 38% of the West 
Bank is now occupied by Israeli settlements and by Israeli military areas. 
Since the West Bank and Gaza Strip only amount to 22% of the historical land 
of Palestine - it means that, in the current Two State negotiations, the 
Palestinians are expected to settle for just 13.2% of the land, despite 
having a population equivalent to Israel's, or greater.

All the Palestinians I met were adamant that they would not let Israel force 
them to emigrate. This is their answer to what Weiss and others in the 
settler movement are trying to achieve. They say Palestinians can either vow 
allegiance to a Jewish Israel or leave their homes and emigrate.

The 16-year-old Yedidya Slonim at the occupied farm told the New York Times 
that its Palestinian owners should move to Jordan or Egypt or some other 
Arab state. 'God gave this to us.' In saying this, he reflected the views of 
the Zionist Orthodox Jewish movement well established in Kedumim known as 
the 'Ne'emanei Eretz Yisreal' [The Land of Israel Faithful].

One of its leaders, Rabbi Uziyahu Sharbaf, stated recently: 'Neither the 
Torah, secular law nor morality can condone any past, present or future 
Israeli government conceding any part of Eretz Yisrael anywhere.' 'Precisely 
now is the time to establish new settlements and outposts throughout the 
Land, especially in Judea and Samaria, and concurrently to build thousands 
of homes in every existing settlement .  We must feel once more that this is 
truly our land, and that other peoples are only here temporarily.'

His claims are based both on seeing the Bible as a title deed and the 
Palestinians as not of equal ancestry in these lands. But recent 
archaeological findings have seriously questioned this. The answer, if 
strict scholarship is the criteria, seems to be that both are partly 
descended from the ancient race of the Canaanites, just as both speak 
related Semitic languages.

It is in other words, a family quarrel of very great and tragic proportions 
in which one partner occupies the other's home and then spends billions to 
suppress or prevent any ensuing protest or revolt.

But I reflected as I drove past the seemingly endless walls of the vast 
castle that Israel is creating in the West Bank that surely Israel was thus 
creating a most impractical gigantic folly that would prove impossible to 
maintain and garrison for decades - and might even eventually cripple it?

I also visited the large ever-expanding Israeli West Bank settlements of 
Ariel and Ma'ale Adumim  - and found they are made up of luxurious housing 
developments reserved nearly entirely for Jews only. Surely this in itself 
is a grave affront to the Muslim majority of the West Bank? Ariel, to add 
insult to injury, has now declared itself the capital of Samaria - despite 
it only being accessed on its hilltop by a road from which Palestinian 
vehicles are banned.

The West Bank is now riddled by such colonialist and exclusive housing 
schemes. I observed such housing developments, marked by their 'European' 
red tiled roofs, on hilltops throughout the West Bank, all laced together 
with expensive highways, all with privileged access to scarce water 
resources, and I have to ask: surely these expensive schemes have already 
totally undermine the feasibility of a Two State solution, leaving only one 
outcome possible - the one Israelis say they do not want - that of the One 
State Solution in which the great effort is put, not into building a wall, 
but into building a society in which both peoples can live together?

But I fear, the way to this now probably inevitable outcome, the 
Palestinians will have to continue for years to live in apartheid-like 
Bantustans, with over four million people subjected to cruel controls and 
millions more former residents with their keys and title deeds waiting in 
refugee camps.

Israel likes to pretend it is part of Europe, with its membership of 
European football and singing contests.  One day perhaps it will learn that 
if it wants to build a state of which it can truly feel proud, and all feel 
secure, it must be more like Europe in outlawing all forms of racial and 
religious favouritism. Currently it would not meet the legally required 
standards for E.U. membership

- Janine Roberts investigative features have been widely published in the 
major Australian newspapers as well as in the Independent and Financial 
Times in the UK. Her investigative film "the Diamond Empire" was shown on 
Frontline WGBH in the USA and on the BBC - it was researched partly in 
Israel.

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