Picture1: Aerial photograph showing the colonial site and the confiscated lands
The continuous colonists aggressions against Palestinian farmers did not spare a poor farmer from As Samu' who live along his family a very simple life in tents and caves.
Ahmad Abu 'Awad (50), the sole supporter of a 10 members' family, owns 200 goats. According to him, he rented 300 dunums for the sake of grazing. His family and he used to live in tents in the land and he used to use the caves in the area for sheltering his goats. He was living a simple yet peaceful life before the establishment of Asae’l colonial outpost which was built across the family's residential area.
Picture 2: 'Eslin Colony
Ahmad told an LRC field researcher:' since the establishment of the colony in 2004, we have been suffering from continuous aggressions. Sometimes they chase the goats or attack the tents and terrorize my family. Last year they chased the goats and started beating them with bats and sticks. They killed four of them'.
Picture 3: Ahmad Abu 'Awad in what used to be his land
'They (the colonists) filled the well that was used for the goats to drink from with stones. In July of last year, a group of colonists attacked 'Midhat abu Karsh”.,They tied him to a poll and brutally beat him. Midhat has no other choice but to complain to the Israeli Occupation Police. However, when the colonists knew about the complaint, they attacked Abu 'Awad tents and caves burning some of them and stealing some belongings. Tthey have, also, destroyed some barns'. He added.
Picture 4+5: part of Abu 'Awad's land
Ahmad pointed that the unremitting colonists' aggressions drove him out of his lands after inhabiting it for more than 15 years, ten years before the colony establishment.
Nevertheless, leaving his lands was not enough to stop the colonists' aggressions. On January 2009, colonists prevented him from planting the land that he rented for farming purposes. They forced the tractor driver to leave the area. Nonetheless, Ahmad came back and planted an area that is not on the colonists' line of sight to stop any possible aggressions.
Picture 6+7: aggressions marks
As for Ahmad's wife, she was talking with us with Nostalgia to the place where she lived for more than 15 years. She told us about the time when she and her children were harvesting and the colonists attacked their tents and broke many belongings, then they attacked her and her children. As a result, her sick son 'Mousa', and while trying to escape the aggressors, fell in a hole and was badly injured. Mousa is suffering from some kind of a phobia. When we asked if he wished to go back to where he used to live, he replied, 'No. the colonists will kill us'.
Asae’l Oupost:
It is nothing more than 10 RVs placed on a mountain summit. It is heavily protected by the Israeli Occupation Forces and no one is allowed to approach the premises, not even the Arab owners of the lands where the RVs are parked. The colony took 150 acres under its control. It is not surrounded by any sort of fences or walls which means that expansion is the most probable option.
Prepared by
The Land Research Center
LRC
