المكتب الوطني للدفاع عن الارض ومقاومة الاستيطان منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية
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By: Madeeha Al-A’raj
The National Bureau for defending land and resisting settlements ( nbprs ) stated in its latest weekly report , that orgy of settlers, and their leaders as well as their supporters in the Israeli far-right parties put the area last week on the crater of a volcano during the Jewish Passover celebrations in the Al-Aqsa Mosque accompanied by unprecedented violence by the occupation police and the special forces of repression, whose disregard for the feelings of believers in the blessed month of Ramadan exceeded all limits, so that it no longer distinguished their suppression among Palestinians of all ages, who used to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque to perform their prayers in the month of Ramadan.
The occupation government provided cover for the practices of the settlers from the alleged Temple groups, even the secular foreign minister, Yair Lapid, rode the hysterical wave, defending the right of all people to practice their religious rites in the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Temple Mount, as he put it. He knows exactly that the issue is not related to the practice of religious rituals as much as it indicates the evil intentions to impose a time and lplace division of the Al-Haram Al-Sharif, just as it happened in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
On the other hand, settlers have been preventing the opening of a vital road for Palestinians linking occupied Jerusalem with Bethlehem since 20 years. The aforementioned road connects the al-Azariya entrance to the main road leading to Bethlehem. Last week, work began to remove dust from the road through an Israeli company, but settlers prevented that. The road was built in the beginning of the year 2000 for settlers in the “Kedar” settlement. It is still used today as an exclusive road for settlers, and its connection point with the main road to Bethlehem has been cut off.
Last week, a crew from the Israel Paths company arrived to open the road, but the settlers demonstrated and prevented them, opposing the connection of the alternative settlement road with the Wadi al-Nar road that connects the central West Bank to the south. At the same time, the occupation forces closed the roads connecting the population centers to Masafer Yatta with earth mounds, starting from the village of Jinba, near the 1948 borders, and they have bulldozed for three days along the old wall that was erected in 1967, linking the village of Jinba to the outskirts of the Bedouin communities.
In addition, settlement associations submitted a request to the occupation police to allow them to hold a flag march around the walls of the Old City in the occupied city of Jerusalem, and the associations called on their supporters, to attend, to gather in the west of occupied Jerusalem and start the march. They indicated that the march of flags would pass near the Lions Gate at the place where stones were thrown at the settlers’ buses.
In Hebron, the occupation authorities close the Bab al-Zawiya area and Beer-sab’e Street, to secure the settlers’ storming of the Ibrahimi Mosque in the center of Hebron and other archaeological areas in the Old City. Moreover, the occupation forces forced the owners of shops in the area to close their stores, and attacked journalists while they were covering the settlers’ storming, while the occupation forces turned the square of the Ibrahimi School in the Al-Sahla area in the Old City into a parking lot for settlers’ vehicles, as part of its preparations for the settlers’ celebrations in the courtyards of the Ibrahimi Mosque. They also stormed an archaeological site in the town of As-Samou’, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, under the protection of the occupation forces. The occupation claims that it is a synagogue.
In Bethlehem, scores of settlers stormed Solomon’s archaeological ponds, south of Bethlehem, amid tight protection from the occupation army. They performed Talmudic rituals centered at the third pond and washed with its water, claiming that it was Talmudic holy water despite the pond’s located in areas A under the Palestinian National Authority’ jurisdiction. Settlers from “Beit Ayin” in the “Gush Etzion” settlement complex, chopped a number of olive trees in lands in the village of al-Jab’a, south of Bethlehem, their ages range between 3-7 years, in a land located in the Mashamis area, east of the village. They cut down cactus trees on the same land, and destroyed barbed wire around the ground.
As for Nablus, a group of settlers attacked the land belonging to the citizen Raed Rajabeh from the village of Rujib, and they cut down a number of olive trees on his land in the town of Sebastia and closed it before the citizens in preparation for the settlers’ storming of the area, it also closed the entrance to the historic Al-Masoudia area, which belongs to the lands of Barqa, northwest of Nablus, with earth mounds, as the occupation seeks to control the archaeological area, knowing that these procedures restrict 12 families living in the area.
In fact, the settlers reached verbal understandings with Army Minister, Benny Gantz, according to which the army would protect and secure the march, despite the official response that the army had told the organizers that “the entry of Israelis into Homesh is illegal.” Members of Knesset from right-wing parties, including Idit Silman, who recently split from Naftali Bennett “Yamuna”, Ati Attia “Likud”, Itamar Ben Gvir, Michal Voldiger, and Bezalel Smotrich “Religious Zionism” also participated in the march.
They said, “It is time to remove the checkpoints from Homesh. These days, with the army, we will reach Homesh and make it clear to all our enemies that the people of Israel do not succumb to terrorism. The yeshiva must be approved in Homesh and allow us to live a normal life in the place.” Dozens of settlers also stormed the archaeological site on top of Mount Ebal in Nablus to celebrate the Hebrew “Passover”, amid the closure of some intersections leading to the area, a day after storming Jabal al-Qubaybat, while settlers stormed Qaryut spring, south of Nablus. ., and they performed Talmudic rituals there, coinciding with the implementation of “tourist tours” by armed settlers from the “Ma’ale Livona” settlement on the eastern al-Lubban lands in Sinjel lands, and they destroyed agricultural lands and broke olive trees.
In Salfit, settlers attacked farmer Jihad Khaled Mansour in Wadi Qana, near the town of Deir Istiya, north of Salfit. While he and his family were on their way to work on their land far from home. The attack resulted in sabotaging the solar energy network serving the house, damaging the plastic water tank on the roof of the house, and cutting water pipes and electric wires.
In the Jordan Valley, which is subject to continuous attacks, settlers bulldozed the Ahmir area of Khirbet al-Farisiya, in preparation for placing caravans in the area on which they established a settlement outpost about a year ago, while the occupation forces detained a bulldozer belonging to a contracting company while working on a sewage project in Kardala village. Settlers also attacked the Bedouin community of Ras Ain al-Auja, north of the city of Jericho, assaulted a number of citizens and threw stones at them, disturbed them through the sounds of loud music late at night.
On the other hand, Human Rights Watch said, ‘The apartheid wall, which the Israeli government agreed to build in 2002, has a length of 770 km, and isolates an area of 733 km2 of Palestinian land, restricting livelihoods in the West Bank. In a report issued at the end of the week, the organization confirmed that the wall, which was built under the pretext of stopping the wave of Palestinian attacks, narrows life in the West Bank through the penetration of four-fifths of it into its lands. She pointed out that the wall further restricted the freedom of movement of Palestinians in the last two decades, and contributed to the fragmentation of Palestinian life, stressing that these are Israeli crimes against humanity, describing them as a policy of ‘apartheid and persecution.’
