23rd March 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah Team | Kafr ad-Dik, Occupied Palestine
On 21st of March, Palestine celebrated their Mother’s Day. A group of Palestinian and international activists visited the village of Kafr ad Dik in the Salfit municipality. The activists delivered roses to the mothers and relatives of political prisoners and sat down with them to hear their stories. The action was organised by three Palestinian groups: Target Association for Rural Development – Burin; Handala Center for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners; and, Retaj Foundation for Women.
The following is a summary of their stories, a glimpse into the 6,500 political prisoners (January 2017) that are imprisoned in Israeli prisons.
Hamidan Family: His sentence of 6 years was imposed on 20th March 2017, he is 20yo
Ratib Family: All 5 sons have been arrested at some stage, the father was arrested recently for the third time for having hunting rifle. Currently has one son in prison.
(Raed) Ali Ahmad Family: Her son is 34yo. In total he has already served over 16 years in Israeli prisons
Naji Family: Sentenced to 35 years in prison, has already served 15 years
Mansour Family: Has been sentenced to 33 months in Israeli prison
Hamidan Family: 37yo, has already served 13 years for 20 year plus a life sentence (20-35 years or open-ended)
AlTurk Family: Two sons arrested on several occasions and have served in total 13 years in Israeli prisons. The 35yo son has been arrested four times, currently sentenced to 7 years in prison
(Ayman) Aldik: Third time he is arrested, 3 years ago. Serving an 8 year and a half sentence in Negev prison (Naqab)
Ali Ahmad Family: Has served 2 years in an Israeli prison without trial
Shammah Family: prisoner is 44yo, has been sentenced to 4 years in prison and will be released in 6 months after serving his sentence in the Negev prison (Naqab)
‘Amer family: The young woman’s husband has been sentenced for 14 months, has a newborn baby, and two of her brothers are also currently in prison; arrested 1 year ago.
Aldik family: Two out of three sons arrested for Facebook posts. Third son (22yo) also arrested and currently in prison.
This action was the first day of a longer campaign to show solidarity with the families of those imprisoned by the Israeli state. The act of imprisonment places a huge strain on families, both emotionally and financially – it is important for us to show them that they are not forgotten.
It was so different this time around.
It had gotten much worse.
There was not one occupation bulldozer but four; the whole hilltop to the East of the Palestinian village of Kufr ad-Dik (Salfit governorate) had been flattened, huge rocks stacked to the side to make way for a new illegal Israeli colony intended to fill the gap between the illegal colony of Ariel and others in the area.
Only a week ago the village achieved a small yet meaningful victory, when an occupation bulldozer was made leave the hilltop without raping the land. However, it came back three days later accompanied by some 40 soldiers to protect the large number of illegal Israeli colonists who started drilling the land they do not own. Villagers estimate at least 600 dunam (600,000 sq m) of land is currently being stolen, in addition to the thousands already confiscated for Israeli settlement expansion.
At least 400 Palestinians from the neighbouring villages of Biddiya, Sarta, Bruqin, and Kufr ad-Dik itself gathered this morning to pray on their land in protest of Israel’s colonialist project of land theft. The villagers outnumbered the Israeli soldiers present by at least 10:1, yet it was the heavily armed military who attacked unarmed civilians with sound grenades and tear gas canisters. One person was hit in the stomach with a tear gas canister and had to be taken away for medical assistance; seven people were treated for tear gas inhalation.
However, the shebab [youth] claimed their own symbolic victories today. They staged sit-ins next to the machinery that razed their land and put up the Palestinian flag on top of one drilling vehicle; they managed to take off one Israeli flag and get rid of it; and, working quietly behind the soldiers who were busy aiming their rifles at children, they tore down a colonist tent where land thieves gather for their break with a Coca-Cola.
Today’s demonstration in Kufr ad-Dik will probably not change the course of events in the larger Israeli colonial project; yet by resisting it, the Palestinians reinforced their dignity, once again.
Photo by International Women’s Peace ServicePhoto by International Women’s Peace ServiceImprovised field hospital ward in which the injured were treated. Illegal Israeli colony of Bruchin in the background (photo by International Women’s Peace Service).Israeli army attacking unarmed civilians with sound grenades and tear gas (photo by International Women’s Peace Service).
26th May 2014 |International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Kafr ad Dik, Occupied Palestine
Early yesterday morning, at approximately 05:00, two drilling machines were at work in Daher Sobeh, at the top of a mountain in the eastern part of Kafr ad Dik, an area where there are many water springs.
Together with the machines, there were a large number of settlers from nearby illegal settlements, a tent with Israeli flags, and four military jeeps, with approximately 40 soldiers. According to several witnesses, the land grab could sum up 600 dunums (60 hectares).
When the first farmer arrived on his land at 06:00, the area had already been declared a closed military zone. When he asked why there where machines at work, and why he was not allowed to access his land, he was told that the area was closed for “security reasons”. He was later handcuffed and detained for almost two hours when he attempted to access his land.
In the following hours, other villagers arrived at the area to protest, together with international activists and Palestinian media, documenting the construction. The Israeli military reportedly stated that if they continued to take photographs, local olive trees in the area would be burnt.
The villagers remained in the area for approximately three hours, but only the mayor of Kafr ad Dik was allowed to speak with the Israeli captain. The mayor stated that the soldiers claimed to operate under a military order, but no documents were ever shown. International witnesses reported that this military zone was arbitrary, allowing some people through but stopping others.
These events followed the previous Thursday; where there was a first attempt to take over the land. Thursday, 22nd, May, in the early morning, approximately 30 Israeli soldiers and border police officers, together with a dozen settlers and one bulldozer, entered the area. The villagers started to protest, involving around one hundred people from Kafr ad Dik and other villages in the area, Israeli forces left at approximately 15:00.
The Israeli captain working with the DCO [District Coordination Office] in the area (Salfit and Qalqilya) was present on Thursday. Before leaving he stated that they would come back. When Israeli forces returned on Sunday morning, they claimed to have governmental approval and that any complaints should be taken to the court.
Furthermore on Thursday night, undercover Israeli police arrested a 34-year-old man in the town. A villager in the town stated that Israeli border police stopped a Palestinian car and took the vehicle. With this car, and without uniforms, they entered in Kafr ad Dik and stopped in front of a supermarket, taking the owner, Wafee at Turc. No further information is available.
The first attempt to build in this area began in 1992, when the construction was stopped by a court decision. After this, there were a further two occasions when settlement expansion was attempted. Currently the municipality together with the owners of the land are trying to take this land seizure to the Bet’el court. This can take two or three years, and there are no guarantees of an impartial court.
The Kafr ad Dik area is actually the table plane of water of the West Bank, although, the people of Kafr ad Dik are only allowed to use 300 cubic meters of water per day, in a town populous of about 6,000. The governing body in the town has asked for an increase in water supply, to no avail.
As suggested by many sources, this attempt is made in order to increase the size of the already large illegal settlement of Ari’el, linking it with all present and future illegal settlements in the area. Kafr ad Dik is actually surrounded by four illegal settlements (Ale Zahav, Pedu’il, Bruchin, and Lesh’ev), while the only area fully available to the village is the one between the village itself and Ben Ghassan. Of the 16,500 dunums owned initially by the village, over the 80 % is under Area C [full Israeli civil and security control]. Some Palestinians have suggested, this is just one step to a further expansion of the Annexation Wall, made in this area in order to divide the West Bank into two parts.
12th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Bruqin, Occupied Palestine
It was only days after it had been placed that a farmer accidentally found a piece of paper that stated he was no longer the owner of his own land. The undated paper, in Hebrew and Arabic, had been hidden under a rock in the farmer’s fields in the village of Bruqin, occupied Palestine. It said that the farmer’s land was being taken for the expansion of the nearby illegal Israeli settler colony of Ariel west.
This farmer was not the only one to be informed about a crime in such a way. More land owners, including the village’s mayor, received the same notifications. Additionally, this week the Jerusalem Post published an announcement that more than 500 new houses would be built on land stolen from Bruqin and its neighbouring villages Sarta and Kafr-ad-Dik (the article itself made no mention of the villages, implying they don’t exist). The exact number of dunums of land being stolen is not clear. Villagers have been given 60 days to file official complaints with the occupation authorities. New houses may be built any time now.
Area of land stolen from Bruqin, Sarta and Kafr-ad-Dik (Photo by Stop the Wall)
The illegal settler colony of Bruchin started off as a military base in 1999. Not long after, the first houses were built on a hilltop; today, there are around 50 of them, with some still standing empty. According to residents of Palestinian villages, those and any newly built houses will be free for incoming illegal settlers. This is one of the tricks the Israeli Apartheid state uses to increase the number of illegal settler colonisers in occupied Palestine: to provide them with free houses built on land stolen from its Palestinian owners.
All settler colonies in Palestine are illegal under international law. In 2012, the illegal settler colony of Bruchin was “legalised” as an “authorised settlement” by that same power that does not respect human rights nor international – or even its own – laws. The latest announced land theft in Bruqin, Sarta, and Kafr-ad-Dik is just another logical step in this crime.
Bruqin is situated 13 km west of the city of Salfit; the industrial zone of the illegal settler colony Ariel can be seen from the village, as is Bruchin. In addition to land theft, constant military invasions, settler and wild pig attacks, the village is under severe stress from sewage and untreated wastewater that is released from the settlement and its factories. Pumped underground, chemical wastewater contaminates local water resources and causes immense damage to the natural environment; the settler sewage river that runs through the village is just one example of such behaviour. Residents say that cancer cases in Bruqin are much higher than Palestinian average; children in particular are suffering.
The location of Bruqin, Sarta, and Kafr-ad-Dik, as well as other neighbouring villages, is strategically important: the Salfit Governorate boasts some of the most productive water zones of the Western Aquifer, a key water resource in Palestine. They also fall in the way of the “Ariel finger”, the Zionist project that intends to annex Palestinian land by connecting the many illegal settler colonies in the area into one big entity. It would also cut the West Bank in two, putting even more pressure on the Palestinian people.
17 April 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Early Monday morning the IOF came to Kufr ad-Dik and demolished three houses and three water wells, along with several tents belonging to Bedouin families nearby. Settlements Bruchin, Alei Zahav, and Pedu’el are expanding quickly, claiming more and more Palestinian land and making life for the people of Kufr ad-Dik impossible.
The soldiers came to the olive groves of Kufr ad-Dik at 7am, armed with ten military jeeps and a bulldozer. After surrounding the area, they began destroying the three houses and water wells which had served as a home and work sheds to several families. Appallingly, the Palestinians present were held at gunpoint during the whole operation.
In four months the Israeli authorities have demolished fifteen houses and Bedouin tents in the area of Kufr Ad-Dik. The houses are used by farmers for agricultural purposes. The farmers use them for storing their equipment and to escape the heat in the summer months. They were particularly important during the harvest, when farmers would live in them for weeks at a time. The destruction of Bedouin tents has left families with no home at all, and no cover in the changing weather.
The Bedouin families had all of their five tents demolished at the same time. They asked the soldiers to spare one tent so that the children at least had somewhere to shelter, but the soldiers showed no mercy, adding that they would be back in one week and if the families had not left the land they would be arrested.
“I have over 600 sheep, there’s no place except here where I can live and support myself and my family” Mohammad, one of the shepherds explain.
Kufr Ad-Dik is surrounded by three hilltop settlements: Bruchin, Alei Zahav and Pedu’el. A forth settlement is currently under construction, further strangling and prohibiting life inside the village. From the ruins of the demolished houses you can see the distant sky scrapers of Tel Aviv and in the good weather you can also see the Mediterranean Sea. Though a large highway cuts its way through their land, Palestinians are prohibited from using it. Instead they have to make a long detour to access villages nearby, insuring the safety of this “settler road”.
Most of the farm land is now area C, meaning that the area is under total Israeli control. Palestinians are unable to acquire any sort of building permit, yet still their livelihood depends on this land. The Israeli authorities claim that they are demolishing houses for security reasons. One of the farmers responds; “ I don’t have any guns or tanks, just my trees. Staying in area A is like living in a small prison.”
Aura and Robin are volunteers with International Solidarity Movement (names have been changed).
