Protesters gathered in Beit Ommar today for the weekly demonstration against the illegal Karmei Tsur settlement. A crowd of about seventy demonstrators marched from the village towards the fence that surrounds the settlement, chanting against the occupation and carrying cardboard “settlements” labeled Efrat, Karmei Tsur, Migdal Oz, Bat Ayn and Karmei Tsur, all settlements built on Beit Ommar land. The protesters took a new route this week, surprising the soldiers by arriving at a new part of the fence.

Protesters got nearly all the way to the fence before the soldiers blocked their path. The protesters then proceeded to set fire to the cardboard settlements in an act of symbolic … Continue reading

On the morning of June 23rd, 2010 Jewish settlers rioted and attacked Palestinian property in the neighbourhood of Saffa, Beit Ommar. On the most recent example of the so-called ‘price tag’ policy, dozens of residents of the illegal settlement of Bat Ayn attempted to set fire to private Palestinian land before throwing stones and bottles at nearby houses.

Israeli soldiers began firing tear-gas canisters and stun grenades after awoken Saffa residents had gathered around dawn, lightly injuring a number of Palestinians. Members of the Beit Ommar National Committee and Palestine Solidarity Project arrived in Saffa shortly after and recorded the incident.

The more radical of Israel’s 500,000 settlers in the … Continue reading

From Robert B.

Al Jab’a, a village of 700 people, sits in the path of a section of the apartheid wall which Israel has scheduled for construction at a future stage. It lies south west of Bethlehem, just one kilometre from the 1967 Green Line – inside the Palestinian West Bank.
From the hillsideone can see, not too far distant, the colony/settlements of Bat Ayn, Betar Ellit, Nahal Gavot and the monstrous Gush Etzion, all built on Palestinian land. It is no wonder that the people feel that their future is precarious.

Present-day life is hard enough. For anything but the most basic necessities villagers rely on shops … Continue reading

By Robert B.

Souad lives in the beautiful village of Saffa, next to Beit Ommar and close by the path of the Annexation Barrier. From her house in the village it is only a short walk to her land – an entire, rolling hillside, the summit of which has been stolen by the Jewish colony/settlement of Bat Eyn. No fence separates her fields and terraces from the settlement: Bat Ayn is one of only two colonies without such a fence in the entire West Bank, designed to make it easier, without a defining border, to make future land grabs.

The title deeds to Souad’s hillside have been in her family for over … Continue reading

11 Arrested, Including 2 Palestinians from PSP, in Saffa Protest Against Settlement Expansion

Saturday afternoon a group of around 50 farmers and residents of Saffa attempted to remove a stone and concrete structure erected on their land by settlers from Bat Ayn. The farmers were accompanied by members of PSP, the National Committee of Beit Ommar, Israeli activists and members of the international press.

On arrival at the structure, which was being guarded by 3 jeeps of soldiers of Israeli army, the Palestinians began to take the structure down. The soldiers forced the farmers away from the site into nearby trees where a number of the group sat down and refused to move from their land. … Continue reading

Update: at approximately 1:30 pm Monday, after calls from several people in the Palestinian Government, Mousa Abu Maria was kissed on the head by the head of the police in Hebron, apologized to, and released from custody. The police claimed they didn’t know who he was when they illegally arrested him the night before. They would not explain why he and Younis Arrar from the National Committee of Beit Ommar were on their list of people to arrest and claimed they were looking for car thieves during their operation in Beit Ommar overnight.

While Salam Fayyad and other PA minsters march in Bil’in declaring their support of the Popular Resistance, the Palestinian police have continued to repress any such … Continue reading

Saturday morning in a mass solidarity action organized by Palestine Solidarity Project, a group of over 30 international and Israeli activists accompanied farmers from Saffa, Beit Ommar as they together cleared rocks from fields and prepared land for planting olive trees. Israeli soldiers and Border Police arrived within the hour and declared the field a Closed Military Zone as the agricultural work constituted a threat to the security of the illegal settlement.

On the trail back to Saffa local youths attached Palestinian flags to the front of jeeps in defiance of the heavily armed soldiers.

… Continue reading

On March 11, 2010 at about 19:00 settlers from Bat Ayn set fire to trees in the valley below the neighborhood of Saffa, Bait Ommar. Members of the National Committee from Bait Ommar arrived in Saffa shortly after and attempted to record the incident. Two members were detained briefly by the Israeli Occupation Forces when they attempted to photograph the fires and were released.

Villagers tried to descend into the valley to put out the fires but were prevented from doing so and were met with tear gas from the Israeli occupation soldiers. A fire engine was also unable to deal with the fires.

Palestine Solidarity Project, along with Rabbis … Continue reading

Update: Preliminary research done by Peace Now has revealed that the area in which farmers from Saffa planted trees (to replace what was destroyed by settlers from Bat ‘Ayn) that the Israeli military announced it would uproot last week was not registered as Israeli ‘state land’ in the 1970′s as they previously claimed. They are, however, in the process of declaring it state land, a legal maneuver to confiscate the land from the Palestinians who have been using it since the before the creation of the state of Israel.

Update February 1, 2010: Farmers Prevented from Accessing Land Ahead of Uprooting

On Saturday, January 30, a group of farmers from Beit Ommar and Saffa, including those from the Thalji family whose … Continue reading

Today, January 28, at approximately 10:30am Israeli soldiers and representatives of the Civil Administration (the liason body between the Israeli military and Palestinian civilians) approached farmers from the ‘Adi and Soleiby farmers in the Saffa area of Beit Ommar and handed them a military order that stated their intention to uproot trees the farmers had planted two weeks ago as part of PSP’s massive replanting Saffa project. The order stated that the farmers had planted these trees on Israeli-owned state lands and they had 48 hours to appeal in Israeli civilian court.

Lawyers with Rabbis for Human Rights, who also supported and participated in the re-planting Saffa campaign investigated the issue and found that the Israeli government claimed it had … Continue reading