Violation: land confiscation notification designated against lands in As Sawiyya for the purpose of the construction of observatory networks around Eli colony.
Date: December 21, 2010.
Perpetrators: the Israeli Occupation Army.
Details:
On December 21, 2010, the Israeli Occupation Army issued military order numbered T/26/10; signed by its High Commander in the West Bank Region, General Avi Mizrahi. According to the order, more than one quarter of a dunum is to be confiscated in parcel 1 of As Sawiyya lands. The endangered area is located in the eastern part of the village.
The confiscation is done for the purpose of the construction of military observatories network surrounding Eli colony, built over Talfit, Qaryut, and As Sawiyya lands.
Picture 1: a photocopy of the military order
Eli Colony, a present danger:
Eli’s history has been related to colonial terror and destruction; it spreads over areas in the southern country side of Nablus Governorate covering a total area of more than 2450 dunums.
Picture 2-3: an overview of Eli
In 1984, a group of Israeli colonists took over some position in the hills surrounding the aforementioned Palestinian villages using fraud and phony documents. The original name of the area was “Wadi ‘Ali”; a region which was taken over by Israeli colonists who believe, according to the Jewish belief, that it is the area the used to separate between the kingdoms of Jehovah and Samaria.
With time, the colony spread like a cancerous cell to cover areas only 30 meters afar from Qaryut village houses. The locals describe it as a seven-headed-dragon in reference to the 7 hills it lies over. The nearby Shilo colony includes within its boundaries a religious center; the Palestinians believe that that center is the source of all the racist and discriminatory ideologies that fills the colonists minds.
It also includes a graveyard that lies beside the main road connecting Nablus and Ramallah. This has serious ideological influence since the Jewish people believe that their dead will be blessed by being buried in a holy site.
Picture 4: Eli Settlement
The Palesinians peered the name of the colony with murder and destruction. Many Palestinians were killed in various colonial aggressions. The colonists had also destroyed a lot of agricultural fields and destroyed a lot of trees especially olives. In the 2010-olive picking-season, Israeli colonists uprooted tens of trees that belonged to Raja Oweis in Al Lubban Ash Sharqi in addition to setting tens of other trees alight.
Other Palestinian properties have not been spared; the colonists tend to assault Palestinian villages every once and a while. On October, 2010, Israeli colonists attacked As Sawiyya School destroying most of its furniture and writing racist mottos on its walls. Furthermore, the colonists burned down a mosque in Al Lubban Ash Sharqi last summer in a disgusting way.
The sequence of Israeli Governments have always shown and provided the needed support and protection for the colonists during their aggressions. Moreover, the provided them with the necessary legal cover needed to steal Palestinian lands and the Judization of their hometowns. The current Israeli Government have given the colonists the green light to initiate the largest colonial expansion operation in years in addition to the milling of a new roads network connecting Adi ‘Ad, Shivut Rachel, Shilo, and Eli colonies.
The Israeli current plan confines an evidence of the Israeli Government support given to the colonists to steal as much Palestinian lands as possible. It is quite clear that all the colonists measures are done under full protection, and sometimes supervision, of the Israeli Occupation Army which support all their actions.