Tag: Aqraba - Page 3 - International Solidarity Movement

Turtles in Aqraba

by Jonas Weber

10 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

“Hurry up you turtles!” Wael yelled in the distance. He had suddenly turned this walk into some kind of contest. We skipped across the rocky landscape of Palestine, dirty and with the sun in our eyes.

We were planting trees in the small village of Aqraba, putting up pictures of our missed friends Rachel Corrie and Vittario Arrigoni. Men and women, young and old were helping out with the planting, and we were treated to tea sweet as syrup. Aqaba has lost 144,000 dunums of land to the ten illegal settlements surrounding the village. A road is being built between the settlements of Itamar and Gittit, effectively grabbing even more of the 17,000 dunums still in the villages possession.

After the planting some villagers insisted on showing us something on the other side of the mountain adjacent to the hillside on which we were planting the trees. We went down the slope between the blooming red, yellow, and purple flowers. We crossed the road leading from Itamar to Gittit and started climbing around the hill on the other side. From a rock right next to the trail a turtle watched us wobble past a hyenas nest with our arms stretched out to our sides, so as not to lose our balance.

On the other side of the hill, was a cave used by sheepherders as a place to sleep for hundreds of years. A few steps further down the road I got to see my first blooming almond tree of the year. Beyond that, the lemon groves stretched across the floor of the valley.

We were given lemons and oranges by the farmers and their children. I used the few Arabic phrases I knew to express my gratitude. Then we started the journey back to the olive trees. We picked up speed, not even stopping to admire the stunning view of the rolling green hills of the West Bank. Wael picked up the pace, treading with experienced feet over the rocky ground.

As a worn-out tourist and skeptic, who has long given up the search for the genuine and untouched, I find myself in this setting, my hands sticky with the sour juice of fresh lemons. The sheep grazing the mountainside stare at me just like the turtle, the street vendors of the old city of Nablus, and the children of Balata. As a Westerner I stand out here, without ever feeling like an outsider. The stare of the turtle, the sheep, the vendors, the children are all full of anticipation and curiosity, as is mine when I round the steep mountainside to catch up with Wael.

“Hurry up you turtles!” he yells in the distance.

But I find no reason to hurry. Palestine has greeted me well.

Jonas Weber is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Four days of settler violence in Burin and the Nablus area

03 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

On Friday afternoon at around 4.30 pm, three young men from the village of Burin, south of Nablus, were attacked by two settlers while picking “akoob” (a plant used in cooking) in the mountains. The men were around 200 meters away from the illegal settlement of Bracha when two settlers attacked them by throwing stones. Ten minutes later, 35 more masked settlers, two of them carrying M16 rifles, came down to attack the three men. When the villagers of Burin came to protect the men by throwing stones, settlers started firing live ammunition at them, forcing them to hide behind rocks.

One settler shouted at the villagers, in Arabic: “We should burn you, you are rubbish!”

At approximately 5.30 pm, one hour after the settlers had arrived, the Israeli army came and forced the villagers to leave their land, while the settlers were allowed to stay.

Again, yesterday at around 10.30 am, five villagers were attacked by settlers while they were constructing a house. 18 settlers, of whom two were carrying guns, attacked the workers by throwing stones at them and their tractors and prevented them from doing their work. The workers called the Red Cross and asked them to call the Israeli army to come and stop the settlers. Around 30 minutes later the army came, but the settlers had already left. When the villagers told the soldiers what have happened, the soldiers called them liars, telling them that the settlers would never attack on a Saturday since it is the holy day for Jewish people.
Then at around 4 pm, the settlers came back and attacked the workers again, throwing stones at them and their families. Again by the time the military had come, the settlers were already gone, and instead of helping the villagers, the soldiers prevented the workers from driving their tractors to get water and soil some 100 meters up the road, threatening to shoot them.

Today at 9.30 am around 30 settlers, of whom three were carrying guns, attacked the five workers once again with stones. 30 minutes later, the Israeli army arrived with four military jeeps, but as in the previous incidents, the settlers had left just before the army came. The two houses under construction belong to the two brothers Zeid and Ghassan Amran. Their family have been under constant attack since they started to build the first house last year. Ghassan Amran lives with his family in one of the houses, he is scared that something will happen to his children, three boys aged three, seven and eight years old.

The village of Burin is surrounded by the illegal Israeli settlements of Bracha in the north, and Yitzar in the south. The settlers make regular visits to the village and in previous incidents have destroyed olive trees, stolen and shot animals, set crops and houses and cars on fire, destroyed homes, shot at people with live ammunition and fired rockets at the village.

In other similar incidents in the Nablus area, according to Ma’an News Agency, Imad Husni Salahat, 47, was severely beaten by settlers in Kawkab Salah near the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Efrayim yesterday. The same day, settlers from the illegal settlement of Yitzar destroyed water pipes south of the village of Madama.

Also, on the night between Wednesday and Thursday, in the village of Aqraba, south east of Nablus, 400 olive trees that had been planted three months earlier, were uprooted and stolen by settlers from the illegal settlement of Itamar. The week before 300 olive trees were uprooted and three wells were destroyed in a settler attack on the village land.

Aqraba inhabitants facing confiscation of yet more farmland to serve the expansion of an illegal settlement

9 September 2010 | ISM Media

Aqraba, NABLUS

On Monday 6^th September, farmers in Aqraba were forbidden by the Israeli army to work on a 200 dunam area of land near the village.

The land is currently in the process of being converted, by a combination of local workers and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, from rocky terrain into usable farmland to increase the productivity of local agriculture.

The land in question was bought one year ago by a businessman from the area as a gift for many local farmers, and is located next to the main road between Nablus and the Jordan Valley (southwest of the village, towards Jurish). Three days ago, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees received a letter from the Israeli authorities saying that they must depart the area immediately. They claim that the land is in Area C, despite papers held by the owner showing otherwise. In one month, the land would have been ready to be used as farmland in the winter. The army threatened to confiscate bulldozers, and arrest workers and union members if work continued.

Ayssar, a member of the Aqraba Municipality, is convinced that the Israeli army have a different agenda. He said, “When they say it belongs to them, their aim is clear: they want to enlarge the settlement, they want to take our land. They threaten the workers, they take the machines, sometimes they burn the land. It is simple: they want to confiscate our land.”

The illegal settlement of Migdalim is located about 2 kilometres south of the land in question.

The municipality reports that many local farmers have been forced to sell their animals, as land grabs in the area have not left enough land to graze animals on. Despite threats from the army to confiscate machinery and arrest workers, local workers are still determined to clear the land, build, and plant trees by hand, and are requesting international accompaniment.

Background

The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) is a Palestinian organisation that was set up in 1986 to support farmers in their struggle against the occupation policies of destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and confiscation of Palestinian resources. See more at http://www.uawc-pal.org.
Aqraba is a small village with a population of around 8000 in the village proper, situated 18 kilometres southeast of Nablus. According to the ARIJ GIS Database of 2009, 90.1% of Aqraba village land is classified as Area C; this area contains all the agricultural lands, and the open spaces in the village. 4.1% of the village’s land area is taken up by settlements (can be seen at http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/ITS_Map1.jpg). Of the farmlands, 62% are olive trees, 8% are for fruit and vegetables, 30% for animal grazing.

Aqraba plants olive trees to ward off settlers

1 August 2010 | ISM Media

Aqraba residents and internationals gather to plant the olive trees

Residents of the village of Aqraba, near Nablus, planted forty young olive trees on their land on Thursday (29 July 2010) to send a message to settlers who have been plowing the area in an attempted land-grab.

The Palestinian villagers were accompanied by many international volunteers – around thirty people from an American group called the Holy Land Trust and about eight ISM activists.

The group gathered at ten in the morning and the forty olive trees were planted by soon after midday.

Three Israeli army jeeps drove down to observe what the large group of people were doing. They then entered the village for some time.

Aqraba is surrounded on all sides by illegal Israeli settlements, including Jaffa An Nun, Yanun, Migdalim and Itamar. To the east it is bordered by the illegal Israeli settlement of Gittit and an area which Israel designates a ‘closed military zone’.

Planting the olive trees was intended to assert the Palestinians' rightful ownership of the land in defiance of colonising settlers

In recent weeks settlers from Itamar had begun plowing the land belonging to Palestinians, prompting fears that they were trying to steal the land for their on use.

The olive tree planting is intended to ward off settlers and assert the Palestinian ownership of the land. The action came a few days after hundreds of olive trees belonging to the nearby village of Burin were destroyed after being set fire to by rioting settlers, in a so-called ‘price-tag’ attack following the demolition of newly constructed illegal settlement buildings.