Violation: taking over 60 dunums of Palestinian lands
Location: Burin and Irak Burin- Nablus
Date: July 2015
Perpetrators: Bracha colonists
Victims: famers from the area
Details:
The Israeli colony of Bracha, which is located on confiscated lands from the Nablus villages of Burin and Irak Burin, is reported to undergo expansion. Lands in the nearby of the colony are being taken over to be annexed to its master plan.
A researcher from Land Research Center documented the takeover of 60 dunums of agricultural lands from the summit of Al-Tur Mountain that is overlooking Bracha colony. This step was the last to take over the third summit of the mountains relative to the aforementioned villages. Colonists are to link the area by a road network that ends up inside the colony.
The person in charge of the colonization file in the West Bank Mr. Ghassan Dughlas said the following:
“Since the second intifada of 2000, the Israeli occupation took over vast area of agricultural lands in the periphery of Bracha colony. The colony’s area doubled since it started on confiscated lands from the villages. Ever since that, the occupation has imposed restrictions on access to ban Palestinians from reaching their lands, which became arid with time”.
He also added:
“In synchronization with that, colonists are given the ultimate freedom to move and wander in the area under the protection of the Israeli occupation army. Colonists have started putting land marks and opening agricultural roads; they also planted the lands. This comes within a Judaizing plan to take over the area”
About Bracha colony:
Bracha was built in 1982 on the Palestinian lands of Kafr Qlil, Burin, and Eraq Burin villages. Around 880 colonists now inhabit the colony.
Eraq Burin has a built-up area of 647 dunums, 291 of which were confiscated for the sake of the colony's expansion. (Source: Geographic Information System- Monitoring Israeli Violations Team- Land Research Center
The Israeli occupation army violates the following international laws and conventions in regard to lands confiscation:
Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague, 18 October 1907.
Article 46. Private property cannot be confiscated.
Article 55: The occupying State shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct.
- Art. 49. Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
- Art. 53. Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.
- Art. 147. Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or
property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
Prepared by
The Land Research Center
LRC
