Location: the villages of Yanoun, Rujib, and BeitFurik
Perpetrators: the Israeli Occupation Army andItmar colonists
Victims: numerous farmers in the target area.
Details:
Land confiscation is one of the pillars of the Israeli policy towards the West Bank and the Israeli hunger for control; the Israelis adopted many methods for doing so, all of them contradict with the International laws and agreements.
Since 2000, the Israelis have been trying ot put facts on the ground to take over as much Palestinian lands as possible; they captured hills, built colonies, military camps, the segregation wall, and classified huge areas as ‘military zones’, inaccessible by Palestinians.
The Israeli Occupation Army isolated thousands of dunums in the eastern countryside of Nablus on the pretext of ‘protecting colonies’. However, Palestinian farmers, victims, never gave up on their lands which they tried to access regardless of the risks. They also filed a case in the Israeli Supreme Court with the aid of a number of humanitarian organizations. The farmers aim to take back around 3500 dunums which were turned into a security buffer zone for the protection of Itmar colony. The target lands extend over 7 km long and 500 meters wide and it passes through the villages of Rujib, Yanoun, and Beit Furik.
However, the unjust, biased, and fake Israeli Judicial system turned down most of the Palestinian demands claiming that colonists need ‘protection’. On the contrary, the sentence helped the armed colonists herds, which gain full protection, support, and probably supervision from the Israeli Occupation Army to capture more Palestinian lands and impose further damage on the Palestinian farms and farmers. Currently, colonists are plowing lands, uprooting trees, and ravaging trees. Needless to say, they are using the lands as if they own it. It must be noted that the isolated lands are a primary source of income for tens of Palestinian families.
Itmar, a hazardous entity:
The corner stone of the colony was put in place in 1984 when the so-called Israeli Supreme Court ordered the dismantling of an outpost in ‘Rujib’ and moving it to a new location using helicopters.
The colony was built by the hands of students of ‘Me’ir’ School who called ‘Tal Haim’ indicating the restart of the ‘Jweish life’ in the site which is considered a spiritual and religious symbol. It is, according to their belief, connected to Eleazar and the 70 elderlies according to Jewish traditions.
Itmar, nowadays, is three times its original size; it expanded over lands of Beit Furil, Al Yanoun, and Rujib. Its total area has reached 6963 dunums with a built up area of 253 dunums inhabited by 651 colonists. (*source: FMEP)
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