Palestinian farmers lose land to Israeli destruction

Mark Heinrich

ARTICLE (November 30 2002) : Sitting in a dirt road and weeping silently in abject defeat, Zuheir Abdel-Hadi watched his olive trees fall one by one to a chainsaw-wielding Israeli flanked by guards with machine guns.

Abdel-Hadi is among some 11,000 Palestinians caught in the path of an elaborate fortified barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank with the stated aim of stopping infiltration by Palestinian suicide bombers.

But the barrier will diverge several km (miles) into West Bank territory in some areas, shielding Jewish settlements built on occupied land while separating Palestinian villages from orchards that have defined the local economy for generations.

That has prompted Palestinian leaders and human rights groups on both sides to accuse Israel's right-wing government of using security as a pretext to annex territory, prejudicing any settlement to end a Palestinian uprising for statehood.

Israel's Defence Ministry denies it, saying the sole rationale of the $200 million "seam zone" project is security and the barrier could be shifted or dismantled once peace with recognised borders is forged with the Palestinians.

It also promises compensation for seized property. But farmers in this arable area just km (miles) from Israeli seaside cities often hit by suicide attacks say this will not offset the loss of what they call irreplaceable ancestral land.

Distraught farmers: "I'm distraught at what is going on here," sobbed Abdel-Hadi as the chainsaw crew hired by the Defence Ministry levelled a grove of 350 olive trees shared by 11 Abdel-Hadi brothers with children to support in the village of Falamiya.

"I was in a group of farmers who filed for an injunction and the consulate of France, which built the irrigation system here, supported us but the court rejected it," said Abdel-Hadi. "No one is helping us now." Other farmers nodded gloomily. But they said they would refuse Israeli money as restitution.

A crowd of farmers and Western pacifists opposed to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip glumly watched the chainsaw crew, who ignored shouted appeals to their conscience.

Some of the activists said they tried to rescue the orchard earlier in the day by hugging trees but retreated to the road after being roughed up and tear-gassed by the security guards.

The Defence Ministry says 15,000 dunams (1,500 hectares or 3,750 acres) worked by some 1,000 farmers have been seized for the first phase of the project, spanning 115 km (70 miles) from the Jenin area in the north to Qalqilya in the west.

It is to eventually extend 370 km (230 miles), encompassing Jerusalem and its flanking, strategic belt of Jewish settlements bulging eastward toward the Jordan River, cutting the West Bank in two.

A 3.5 metre-high (11.5 feet) electronic fence with touch and motion sensors will anchor an obstacle course of barriers. In some areas where defence strategists believe motorists and passers-by could be exposed to snipers, a towering concrete wall with sensors is being erected instead of the fence.

On the West Bank side the zone will start with a concertina wire fence, followed by an anti-vehicle trench and patrol road. Anyone able to outwit the electronic barrier would have to get past a strip embedded with devices to betray footfalls, another patrol track and finally a concertina fence on the Israeli side. The first stage is due to be completed in mid-2003.

Fence divides villagers from farms: Some of the two dozen Palestinian villages abutting the zone between Jenin and Qalqilya will see most of their farmland wind up on the west side of the barrier, says B'Tselem, an Israeli group monitoring human rights in Israeli-occupied territories.

Eight villages will find themselves on the west side too, separated from the rest of the West Bank even though they rely on nearby cities - Jenin, Tulkarm and Qalqilya - for health and welfare services, education, jobs and supplies, it says.

"This raises a significant potential for infringement of human rights of thousands of Palestinians. So far, Israel has only addressed the issue of infringement of property rights," B'Tselem said in a report.

"We are seeing the destruction of this village and its agriculture. It is really the second phase of the displacement of Palestinians that began in 1948," prominent Palestinian human rights activist Mustafa Barghouthi said.

He was referring to the flight or expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the founding of Israel, which led to five neighbouring Arab states to attack the newly established country.

Israel denies this is the case. Colonel Nezah Mashiah, head of the Defence Ministry's Seam Zone Management, lists legal and practical steps he says have been or will be taken to ensure disruptions to Palestinian lives are "kept to a minimum".

More than 12,000 felled olive trees had been replanted successfully, most in locations chosen by their owners, he said, denying reports by Palestinians that some trees were being sold for $200 apiece to Jewish settlers. Any irrigation pumps or pipes destroyed or cut off by the barrier would be replaced free of charge, Mashiah said.

Forty gates will be established in the barrier to allow farmers to reach plots on the other side. "If the security situation is good, we'll give them magnetic cards to pass, if not, a soldier will check them through," he said.

Mashiah said the ministry had set aside $20 million to settle the first five damage claims from farmers' groups. "We believe there will be many more claims and we have a budget for that," he said. Asked about farmers' assertions that they would not take Israeli money, he called them a smokescreen to avoid enraging militant compatriots fighting Israel.

Farmers paying price of violence: "We know this project causes a lot of pain to Palestinians who have done nothing (wrong) but it is the price to pay for a terrible reality Israel cannot live with," Mashiah said.

"More than 650 Israelis have been killed and over 4,000 hurt in terror attacks. Unfortunately we cannot create a security obstacle with balloons in the air, but only on the land."

The B'Tselem report questions the army's provisions for passage. It says many Palestinians have come across soldiers at checkpoints who used one pretext or another to disregard permits presented and ordered them to turn around.

"(Moreover), the indefinite duration of requisitions and the fact that a vast amount of resources is being invested in erecting the barrier increases the likelihood that the action is in effect a disguised expropriation of property," it said.

An international official who deals extensively with Palestinians said they fear Israel wants to unilaterally change the boundary to cement strategic settlements and "further sever the contiguity of Palestinian areas needed to create a state".

B'Tselem said Israel had often used "requisition for military need" decrees in the past to take over Palestinian lands to establish Jewish settlements. "These lands were never returned to their owners," it said.

Palestinians, it added, would also have difficulty proving land ownership for compensation purposes because some two-thirds of West Bank property was not entered in the Land Registry when Israel occupied the territory in 1967.

Israel had since frozen registration procedures, it said. To prove ownership of unregistered land, Palestinians must prove they have cultivated it for 10 consecutive years and attach a survey by a licensed surveyor - conditions that B'Tselem said were often impossible to fulfil.


Source: Business Recorder