المكتب الوطني للدفاع عن الارض ومقاومة الاستيطان منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية
Related Articles
By: Madeeha Al-A’raj
The national Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlements stated in its latest weekly report , that two years on the Israeli Supreme Court’s approval of the cable car project that extends to the Western Wall ‘Wailing’ in the Old City of Jerusalem, yet the Occupying State is looking for an international company to adopt it. However, the occupation authorities invested about US $ 8,000,000 in it, and continued to uproot ancient olive trees and confiscate lands from the Silwan town. Noting that, three stations will be erected for the cable car: the first station is at the end of Emek Refaim Street, the second on ‘Mount Zion’, and the third in the so-called ‘National Park’ of ‘David City’, on the roof of the ‘Elad Settlement Association’s building.’
According to officials in charge of the project, the goal is to serve hundreds of thousands of people and facilitate their access to the Old City and the “Western Wall” every year. Several estimates stated that it won’t solve the transportation problem, and will harm the lives of the residents who live there, and the natural landscape of the historic basin of the Old City. Worth noting that in May 2022, the Supreme Court rejected four petitions submitted against the project, but it approved it, besides, the brutal war waged by the Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir’s government on the Gaza Strip.
The so-called Jerusalem Development Authority is trying to proceed with the cable car project, as the 8 millions of dollars have been invested in without hiring consultants in the fields of transportation and security. Most of the contracts, except one, were completed without tenders due to the difficulty of finding an international company to implement them, especially after the withdrawal of 3 French companies and a Swiss one under the pressure of the BDS Movement, as the project has a political sensitivity, which causes great damage to the existing heritage in the city, especially, as it confiscates real estate and homes, causes great damage to the lives of residents, and distorts history and heritage of the natural scene in the Old City of Jerusalem and its surroundings, in accordance to the ‘Emek Shaveh Association, which opposes the project in the town of Silwan.
In Jerusalem as well, within the framework of the campaign launched by the occupying state against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees ‘UNRWA’, the decision of the occupation municipality in Jerusalem to evacuate the land on which the agency’s Qalandiya Educational Institute is based, which its management was received on January 26, a settlement project that had been announced years ago for the benefit of the expansion of settlement construction, as the project seeks to control about 110 dunams, where the Qalandiya Institute was built on the largest part of it in the early sixties of the last century under a lease contract signed between the Jordanian government and the agency, where the Jordanian government purchased land of Qalandiya Institute for about JD 7,000, and later signed a contract to build a vocational training institute on the land.
However, the occupation authorities once again demanded the eviction of the land on which the institute was built, claiming to build educational centers and gardens on it. They also handed over demolition notices to dozens of homes in the vicinity of the institute. Worth noting that the occupation’s efforts to control the land go back to 2008, after an extremist right-wing Jewish organization led by the deputy mayor of the occupation, Aryeh King, announced at the time that his organization had a mandate from the land owners and their heirs to seize 300 dunums out of 1,150 dunums of “Jewish ownership.” If the settlement project is implemented, it will threaten the future of hundreds of Palestinian students from refugee camps in the West Bank, who study at the institute in hundreds of professional specializations, in addition to the demolition of dozens of homes in the vicinity of the institute that are surrounded by dozens of residential buildings housing hundreds of people. It is expected that this settlement plan will hinder the existing Palestinian urban communication between Ramallah and East Jerusalem.
In 2021, the Planning and Building Committee at the occupation municipality in Jerusalem approved a large settlement plan on the lands of the abandoned Jerusalem International Airport of Qalandia, adjacent to the Vocational Training Institute. It includes the construction of about 11,000 settlement units, hotels, public parks, and industrial zones on 1,243 dunums north of the Occupied Jerusalem; it also includes the establishment of commercial complexes along St. n. 45, and the transformation of the main terminal at the airport into a “tourist facility.” The first phase includes approving the construction of 3,800 settlement units, which will later be expanded to about 10,000 units, to which public facilities and commercial and industrial areas will be added.
As for the new settlement plans, Israel put forward a plan to build 3,344 new settlement units in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, in response to the operation that targeted soldiers and settlers near the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, specifically in Ma’ale Adumim, 2,350 units, in Kedar, 300 units, and in Efrat, 694 units, in response to the Minister of Settlement in the Ministry of the Army, Bezalel Smotrich, and the leaders of the settlement councils, who have continued to pressure over the past period to push the government to approve the construction of thousands of settlement units in the Palestinian territories occupied in the 1967 aggression.
Last Thursday, Netanyahu held a session for his inner cabinet, where the Army Minister, Yoav Gallant, Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer participated, in which it was decided to to hold a session of the Supreme Council for Planning to approve the construction of these settlement units. This also brings to mind the approval to build 5,700 settlement units after the operation that targeted settlers in the ‘Eli settlement’ in July, last year.
Smotrich, Ben Gvir along with extremist right-wing fascist leaders from Likud, and behind them the leaders of ‘Yesha’, exploit the war on Gaza to launch a frantic and unprecedented war that tears apart the West Bank. They are rushing to complete the construction of 8 bypass roads to facilitate and secure the movement of settlers, such as the Huwwara, Al-Arroub, and other bypass roads, they turn the lives and movement of citizens into harsh daily suffering. It is an old & new phenomenon experienced by Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, which is the expansion of the establishment of military checkpoints and gates at their entrances, and exits and the change of transportation lines between governorates to fit it. The West Bank experienced this during the second intifada, but this time is more cruel and more dangerous because it is linked to the structure of the apartheid regime, which the occupying state is establishing in the occupied West Bank.
At the gates of the Nablus city, the occupation authorities established 8 new gates, besides 10 previous ones, which now threaten the lives and interests of citizens and their movement to and from other cities in the West Bank, even movement within the governorate itself has become difficult for the citizen and fraught with dangers, in addition to wasting the time of workers, farmers, merchants, employees, or even a patient in need of care. From the village of Burin, which is only a quarter of an hour away by car from the city of Nablus, moving from there to the city requires the citizen a time ranging from two to four hours and in fact citizens are living in adjacent prisons around the city.
The matter is not limited to Nablus Governorate, but extends to cover most of the West Bank governorates, where the occupation forces deploy about 750 fixed and mobile checkpoints and erect about 230 gates at the entrances to towns and villages in the Palestinian countryside, in a deliberate application of the policy of the Minister of Settlement in the Ministry of the Army, Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli Minister of Finance, and the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, who call for the establishment of buffer zones in the vicinity of the settlements to facilitate the life and movement of settlers, supported by a judicial dome administered by the Israeli Supreme Court and other local courts.
In addition, the policy of attacking Palestinian lands and property continues in many governorates, where settlers set up 4 caravans in the lands of Khallet an-Nahlah near the village of Wadi Rahal, south of Bethlehem, to expand the borders of the “Givat Einam settlement outpost”, while other “Ma’ale Amos” settlers in the Kisan Wilderness, east of Bethlehem, burned a house, a vehicle, and 2 barns for raising livestock and storing its supplies, belongs to the citizen Ibrahim Awaida Sawarka and the citizen Muhammad Yousef Al-Obaiyat. The occupation forces also handed over demolition notices to four houses, one of which was uninhabited, with the area of each house being about 100 square metres, in addition to a restaurant with a park of 5 dunums in the village of Al-Walaja, while sweeping of lands continues in the village of Husan, adjacent to the apartheid wall in the Khalaf area. Al-Muteena, with a total area of about 30 dunums to expand settlement road n. 60, which extends from the main western entrance to the villages of the western countryside all the way to Husan.
In the Nablus Governorate, settlers in army uniform, working under the supervision of the pastoralist settler named Kobi, raided the tents of the residents of Khirbet Tana and expelled the families from the place while allowing only one person from each family to remain with the sheep. They stole electrical tools in addition to raiding a citizen’s tent and terrifying the young children. They were immediately expelled from Al-Khirbet and separated from their father, even though there were no parents or relatives for the children in the town of Beit Furik. At the same time, a group of settlers attacked shepherds in the Al-Wadi Al-Gharbi area of Al-Sawiya lands which resulted in the complete burning of a vehicle used by the citizen Muhammad Ezzat Saleh to reach his land. A young man and a child were injured by settlers’ bullets during an attack on the village of Asira Al-Qibliya. Settlers from the “Yitzhar” settlement attacked the eastern area of the village, amid heavy gunfire, while the head of the Duma Village Council, Suleiman Dawabsha, reported that a number of settlers, protected by occupation soldiers, attacked four young men while they were in the Fasayil Reserve in the village, and began firing bullets at them.
On other level, it seems that the occupying state no longer pays attention to the position of the international community regarding its illegal activities in the Palestinian territories occupied in the June 1967 aggression, nor to the sanctions imposed by the United States, Britain, and later France on a number of settlers, or even for the International Court of Justice to begin examining their political and the legal status of the occupation and settlement in the West Bank. The settlers on whom sanctions were imposed work on the margins, while the real terrorist leaders and their political authorities remain outside the circle, especially those who are in charge of establishing settlement outposts and pastoral farms with all the accompanying manifestations of violence and terrorist practices at their hands. The establishment of such outposts and farms throughout the West Bank creates daily confrontations between settlers and Palestinians, especially in recent months.
Since the beginning of the brutal war waged by Israel on the Gaza Strip, a large number of Palestinian communities have left their lands due to settlers’ control over more of these Palestinian lands, a control sponsored by extremist Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who uses coalition agreements to form a government with Likud to move forward with his settlement project, after powers in this field were transferred from the Civil Administration and the Central Region Command to a directorate established by the aforementioned minister in the Ministry of Army, and after full legal powers were transferred from the legal advisor in the regions to the legal advisor in the Ministry of Army, who belongs to the Religious Zionist Party. This enables Minister Smotrich and his assistants in his ministry to gain increased control over construction planning and enforcement procedures in the West Bank and to urge the settlers, through right-wing ministers, to expand the settlements.
Moreover, the last two decades have provided a comfortable space for settlers to expand settlement in areas C, as settlers have been working since the beginning of the war on Gaza according to an agenda declared by Yossi Dagan, Director General of the Settlement Councils, when he explained that the agreement Oslo is dead, and the Palestinians welcomed the events of October 7 and presented themselves as enemies, which obliges the occupying state to lift all restrictions on settlement expansion in response to that, and the demands of the representatives of the most extremist settlers, who today stand at the head of the two most important institutions overseeing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, namely, ‘the Coordinator’s Office’ including the government’s Civil Administration, which is controlled by Minister Smotrich and the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee at the Knesset, which is a key committee and most of its sessions are held secretly, and supervisees the formulation of strategic visions for the status of the occupied territories and way of governing them, after the appointment of Tzivi Sukkot, from the Religious Zionism Party, as its head. It is known that Sukkot was arrested several times for his extremism and former of the ‘Pay the Price’ terrorist organization.
List of Israeli Assaults over the Last Week Documented by the National Bureau:
Jerusalem:
- Fencing lands with barbed wire in preparation for seizing them in the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood in the Silwan town, others seized two and a half dunums in the same town under the pretext that it was “Jewish property.” Noting that the lands belongs to the Abu Diab, Al-Rajabi, and Al-Saloudi families, and they possess all the papers and documents proving their right to the land.
- Notification to demolish a three-storey building that includes the Al-Issawiya Sports and Cultural Club, and the Kindergarten Al-Majd School for children, and began demolishing a building under construction in the town of Beit Hanina, consisting of eight floors belonging to Fareed Abu Zahriya. Al-Maqdisi, Hosni Shweiki also began demolishing his residential building in the Wadi Yasoul neighborhood in the town of Silwan, which consists of 5 apartments, to avoid heavy occupation fines. The Jerusalemite occupation authorities also forced Ali Odeh to demolish his house, under the pretext of building without a permit in the Bir Ayoub neighborhood in the town of Silwan, while the occupation municipality crews stormed the homes of the Al-Rajabi, Odeh and Abu Shafee families, in the Al-Bustan neighborhood and handed them orders to demolish their homes.
- Performing Talmudic rituals and dances at the Umayyad palaces adjacent to the southern wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Hebron:
- Injuring the child, Ahmed Fadel Al-Hamamda, in the foot after being thrown with stones, and his brother Adham was injured with bruises, after settlers assaulted and beaten them, in the village of Al-Mufaqara in Masafer Yatta.
- Chopping old olive trees, in the “Fateh Sidra” area in Masafer Yatta, and released their livestock into the citizens’ agricultural crops, prevented citizen Farid Al-Hamamda from reaching his land, and they conducted shooting training near the citizens’ homes.
- Opening fire randomly near the citizens’ homes in the Badia Um Qisa area in Musafer Yatta, using the area as a training ground
- Beating and abusing the brothers Salah, Muhammad, Ezz, and Qusay while they were grazing their sheep in the Wadi al-Rakhim area near Susiya in Masafer Yatta, causing them to suffer bruises, while the occupation forces fired sound bombs at the brothers and detained them for several hours.
- Publishing pictures showing the deliberate acts of sabotage and destruction carried out by the occupation forces, accompanied by a group of armed settlers, during their storming of the Al-Majaz area in Masafer Yatta, which included destroying foodstuffs and the people’s dairy products, which represent their only source of income, and mixing them with feed intended for livestock, while settlers attacked sheep herders from the Shawaheen family in the Wadi Al-Jawaya area, east of Yatta, and prevented them from grazing their sheep on their lands.
Bethlehem:
- Demolishing 3 houses in the village of Al-Walaja, in the Ain Jwiza area, west of Bethlehem, belonging to Mahmoud Abu Khayara, Amin Al-Atrash, and Jamal Absiya, each with an area of 100 square meters, under the pretext of not having a license, and two houses in the village of Al-Walaja, a home for the family of Shadi Walid Rabah. They also demolished A house belonging to the Ibrahim Rabh family, and a retaining wall for the Adel Abu Srour family in the area, while settlers from “Ma’ale Amos” attacked the homes of four families in Kaysan, east of Bethlehem, belonging to citizens Mahmoud Ibrahim Abayat, Afif Hassan Abayat, Hassan Yousef Abayat, and Ibrahim Aweida Sawarka, who were forced at gunpoint to leave their homes.
- Attacking shepherders in the village of Minya, southeast of Bethlehem and forced them to leave the area.
Ramallah:
- Injuring a citizen while he was grazing his sheep near the “Sidi Shiban Shrine” northeast of the city of Al-Bireh, sustained bruises and wounds.
- Beating a shepherd, Riad Shalalda, west of the town of Kobar, stole 200 sheep, and detained him from 12 noon in the “Nahliel settlement” until 8 p.m. then handed him over to the army. He was suffering from bruises, while the sheep were still in the possession of the settlers.
- Closing an agricultural road opposite the Sinjil Junction serving farmers of the towns there.
- Building a new settlement road in the Jabal Al-Deir area near Ain Harasha, in the village of Al-Mazra’ah Al-Gharbiyyah, northwest of Ramallah, attacked the home of citizen Mahmoud Awashra. They broke its windows and wrote racist slogans on its doors in the town of Sinjil. Others also attacked citizens’ homes in the town of Turmus Ayya, burned a vehicle belonging to citizen Munther Amin al-Hindi, attacked citizens’ property, and wrote racist slogans on citizens’ homes in the town.
- Attacking a house belonging to citizen Abdul Khaleq Faraj Mazhar in the village of Deir Nidham, north of the city of Ramallah.
Nablus:
- Assaulting 3 young men from the village of Asira al-Qibliya and set up a checkpoint at the entrance to the village, and they threatened to burn their vehicle if they returned to the checkpoint.
- Smashing windows of 10 vehicles and damaged their tires, during a raid in the town of Huwwara.
- Attacking the Barqa village and threw Molotov cocktails at the house of citizen Mahmoud Hamed, located at the entrance to the village.. They also burned the house of citizen Jamal Reda and his vehicle.
Jordan Valley:
- Forcing shepherds to leave their lands in the Ain al-Sakot area in the northern Jordan Valley. They pursued the shepherds and their livestock while they were in the pastures in the area, forced them to leave the pastures, and threatened them not to enter them. This comes within the framework of a severe siege imposed by the occupation and settlers on citizens in the Jordan Valley, by closing vast grazing areas to shepherds, as these lands have become under the control of settlers.
- Invading citizens’ lands in Khirbet Al Farisiya, and began grazing their livestock to destroy the Palestinians crops.
- Bulldozing pastorals established next to the Ka’abna Arab community in Al-Mu’rajat, in order to expand them for the benefit of settlers.
