The series of Israeli annexation and threatening are now targeting AL-Midya village in Ramallah district

Al-Midya is a small Palestinian village located about 20 Kilometers to the northwestern part of Ramallah city and embraces a built-up area of 217.78 dunams. Al-Midya with a population of 1212 according to the PCBS projection 2003 is considered a doomed area since 1967, where almost 87% of its land has been either seized between the 'Armistice line and No man's land' or confiscated to the Israeli territories behind the 'Armistice line (Green Line of 1967)' which is illegally considered by the Israeli government as a state Land. Nowadays 15 Palestinian houses in Al-Midya village are threatened to be evacuated by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) under the pretext of taking advantage of the land of Israel without having the right to do so!!which is illegally considered by the Israeli government as a state Land. Nowadays 15 Palestinian houses in Al-Midya village are threatened to be evacuated by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) under the pretext of taking advantage of the land of Israel without having the right to do so!!

According to the British mandate surveys of 1942, Al-Midya village boundary was 6959.17dunams while nowadays it only consists of 892.3 dunams. The Israeli colonization activities in the No man's land which are adjacent to the village boundary have not stop since the 1967 war. Hashmona'im colony established in 1985 and surrounding the village from the south is considered to be one of the colonial stars of the Israeli PM Sharon project and devoured a total area of 1049 dunams. Map1.

Around 87.1% of Al-Midya village was annexed in 1967 and what remains to the 1200 Palestinian villagers now is about 892.3 dunams from which a 217.78 dunams are considered as a built up area, see table 1. The Israeli court calls for the demolition and the evacuation of 15 houses which belong to 36 households with a total number of 280 persons, which means that quarter of the population is threatened to become homeless. Justifications have been given form the Israeli court of Ramlah stating that there is a legal argue over the ownership of some of these houses while others had no building permits. In addition, some Palestinian villagers were asked to pay a fee for the State of Israel in order to compensate for the usage of their land.  Table 1: Satellite image based analysis of Al Media area annexation, 1967-2003.  

Source: Arij GIS &RS Unit, 2003.

Hashmona'im, one of the largest colonies in Modin block with a population reached to 1955 in the year 2000 established in the year 1985 over Palestinian land belongs to Al-Midya and Na'lin villages, See Photo.

According to the master plan, this block will be the largest city between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Based on satellite image analysis (ARIJ GIS 2003), there are 101.25 dunams of the original total area of the village which were confiscated towards Hashmona'im settlement. This colonization of the Palestinian land will block any possibility of the village's southern urban expansion and threaten further confiscation of land as shown in Map 2  . At the same time, the shorter distance between the village built up area and the green line is 730 meters. This fact reveals the continuous policy of land grab used by the successive Israeli governments; Thus, violating the International laws and creating more facts on the ground that will complicate any provisional negotiation over the final status of the West Bank.

Since 1967, Israel pursued a policy of colonizing Palestine through a settlement policy in an attempt to change its demographic character. Israel has issued various military orders which authorized and facilitated land grab from Palestinians, such as order no. 159 and 291. Exercising pressure of threat such as house demolition and land seizure for military purposes has always been used as an approach to let the Palestinians evacuate their land. Israel is now preparing for constructing the infrastructure of the next steps of erecting the Segregation Wall. An important issue for Israel in the process of preparation is the manipulation over land that the wall will pass through.  Map 2 shows the proposed path of the segregation wall, suggesting the annexation of Modiin block and the surrounding Palestinian localities to Israel behind the Segregation Zone.

Definitely, Al-Midya village will be the second victim of the Israeli devouring of Palestinian land since it is located nearby the No man's land which is considered by Israel as state territories.

Prepared by:  
The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem

&
Land Research Center-Jerusalem