On Monday, October 18th, 2010, at around 3:30pm, settler security guards from Gush Ezion Settlement harassed two Palestinian farmers from Beit Ommar and confiscated their truck and bulldozer. The farmers were on their lands as they attempted to drive a large truck filled with dirt to fill a sink-hole created by sewage dumped by the settlement the day before. An armed settler guard stopped the farmers, hit one of them, and confiscated his identity card. Another guard then proceeded to take the farmers’ bulldozer, which had been used the day before to tow away a bulldozer submerged by sewage from the settlement.

Settler guards do not have the authority to take any property, including the bulldozer … Continue reading

Thousands of liters of raw sewage from the illegal Gush Etzion settlement flooded over 50 dunams of Palestinian farmland in the village of Beit Ommar last night. The sewage was pumped from a storage unit inside the settlement onto the land of the Sabarna family, flooding trees and submerging a bulldozer. As of 10 AM the water is still flooding.

Today marks the fourth time this year that the settlement has dumped waste water onto the Sabarna’s land. The settlement emptied sewage onto their land in March, April and June, destroying the crops and costing the farmers thousands of shekels in lost income. … Continue reading

On Thursday, October 14th a Palestinian farmer from Saffa, accompanied by members of the National Committee in Beit Ommar along with international solidarity activists, cleared brush on his land near the Israeli settlement of Beit Ayn. Farmers in the Saffa Valley are preparing the land to plant several thousand trees in December to keep the land from being annexed to settlement.

After about an hour or working, two Israeli soldiers appeared at the top of the hill, about 150 meters away from where the group was working. They shouted at the farmers to stop working the land and to come towards the soldiers. The … Continue reading

On Sunday, October 3, 2010, farmers from Saffa, accompanied by international and Israeli solidarity activists, worked their lands near the illegal Israeli settlement of Bat Ayn. The Palestine Solidarity Project has organized a campaign in the Saffa Valley to support the farmers every Sunday, Monday, and Thursday over the next couple of months as they clear their lands in preparation for planting. Over the last several years, the farmers have been harassed by settlers from Bat Ayn or prevented from reaching their lands by the Israeli military.

This past Sunday, on the first day of the campaign, farmers cleared the land by burning and … Continue reading

On Monday, September 27th, 2010, at around 7am, Israeli settlers from Migdal Oz used a bulldozer to clear 2 dunams of Palestinian land in the southern West Bank. The land belongs to Abed al Halim Abu Ayyesh from Beit Ommar. The settlers began clearing his land close to the entrance of Migdal Oz just hours after the expiration of a 10-month freeze in settlement construction. Part of the land was cleared with the bulldozer, presumably for construction, while rocks were piled in another area. Migdal Oz was constructed in 1977 on land stolen from Beit Ommar villagers, and now houses 300 settlers.
… Continue reading

On Saturday, September 25, the National Committee in Beit Ommar, together with the Palestine Solidarity Project, organized a demonstration near the illegal Karmei Tsur settlement after midday prayers. The protesters held signs expressing solidarity with Silwan, where demonstrators have clashed with the Israeli military for three days after two Palestinians were shot and killed by settler security guards. The demonstration also commemorated the anniversary of the massacres of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon. Additionally, the villagers demanded the release of Palestinian political prisoners, and particularly the release of Yousef Abu Maria, a 17 year old boy from Beit Ommar who has been held in Israeli prisoner for 3 months despite an … Continue reading

by Joseph Dana

“At 3:30 or 4am I heard some noise outside of my window,” Silwan resident Abdallah Rajmi told me as we stood on a narrow street in the middle of a battle between young Palestinian stone throwers and Israeli occupation forces from the Border Police. “I thought it was a simple drunken fight but then I heard a lot of noise coming from the people involved and my neighbors began waking up.”

Silwan is a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, near the walled Old City, and is the target of an ongoing Israeli government plan to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes and replace them with Israeli settlements and … Continue reading

Ibrahim Muhammad Biss’s curiosity was slightly piqued when a car driving slowly along Route 60 came to a halt in front of him and his group of friends at the entrance to the Aroub refugee camp just north of Beit Ommar on a Thursday in early June. 16-year- old Ibrahim, who lives in the camp, was waiting for traffic to pass so he could cross the street to enter the Aroub Agricultural College. Assuming the driver was stopping to ask the boys for directions, Ibrahim watched as the middle-aged man lowered the window.

Instead of an inquiring foreigner, Ibrahim found himself facing an Israeli settler pointing a handgun at … Continue reading

This Saturday a group of Palestinian, Israeli and international activists were met in the vineyards of Beit Ommar by several Israeli soldiers as they attempted to make their way to the fence surrounding the illegal Israeli settlement Karmei Tsur, built on Beit Ommar land. The soldiers insisted on preventing the group from even approaching the outer fence, declaring the entire area a closed military zone and arresting two Israeli activists. Unlike the international and Palestinian activists who have been arrested in the same area in recent weeks (the Palestinian arrested last week is still in jail; the internationals were banned from the entire West Bank for the remainder of their visas, pending appeal), the Israeli activists were released … 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