The village of Al Shufa is located 5 kilometers to the south of the city of Tulkarem. Its population is about 2500 Palestinians mostly working in agriculture. The colony of Ifni Hafets was established in 1983 on 360 dunums expropriated from the village. The owners of this land were four Palestinian citizens from the Dropy and Barqawy families. The colony contains 300 housing units in addition to an Israeli military encampment. Israeli colonists work in Israel during the day and then come back to the colony to sleep over night. Overall, more than 1000 dunums were confiscated since 1987 under the pretext of ''security reasons'' while the main reason of the confiscation is to use the land for future settlement expansions.
New violations took place since the beginning of Intifadat al Aqsa; More than 30 dunums were used in Khillat Al Sheikh location to build upon them 10 housing units to house more Israeli colonists. Work was embarked upon in June 2000 and right now it is in its final stages. It is expected that these units will be ready to house Israeli settlers by next April. Originally, these 30 dunums were owned by the heirs of Mr. Abdel Kareem Dropy, the heirs of Mr. Hassan Dropy in addition to the heirs of Mr. Na'eem Hannoon.
The land confiscation policy in Al Shufa village have caused both human and agricultural damages to the residents of the village; the human costs include depriving the residents of their main source of income, terrorizing the children as the military exercises takes place only about 300 meters away from the village, in addition to terrorizing the farmers as they plant their fields. The agricultural damages include the destruction of a green house that covered an area of about 1.5 dunums owned by Mr. Hazem Ahmad Hamed, the uprooting of more than 200 olives trees owned by Mr. Tahseen Mohammad Hamed, Zaki Abdel Aziz, in addition to the grazing of about 20 dunums to facilitate the expansion of the settlement.
Prepared by
The Land Research Center
LRC
