The
Right To Our Land
Must Be Restored
By Fareed Taamallah
28 November, 2007
IMEU
This
week in Annapolis, Maryland the United States government will host a
conference between Palestinian and Israeli leaders to launch peace talks
on a permanent agreement. A vital component of the peace proposals to
be discussed involves exchanges of territory that would allow Israel
to keep its West Bank "settlement blocs" while compensating
Palestinians with land inside Israel.
But my community of Qira,
like many others, cannot survive in a Palestinian state divided by Israel's
settlement blocs. The settlement blocs are built on Palestinian agricultural
land and water resources, and carve the West Bank into disconnected
Palestinian bantustans.
Every morning I see through
my window the settlement of Ariel, lying atop the hill adjacent to my
village. I've never visited Ariel's beautiful homes and green gardens,
so different from our poor, parched community, because as a Palestinian
I am forbidden to enter Ariel, even though it sits on Palestinian land
in the West Bank.
In 1978, when construction
of Ariel began, I was a child. Yet I recall my frustration and sorrow
for the many Palestinian farmers who lost their lands to the Israeli
colony. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs, Ariel is one of the four fastest growing Israeli settlements.
It expanded from 179 acres and 5,300 residents in 1985 to 1732 acres
and 16,414 inhabitants in 2005.1 In contrast, my village, which is hundreds
of years old, has not grown because the Israeli government restricts
the area and growth of Palestinian communities.
Ariel is located in the center
of the Salfit District in the northern West Bank, 13 miles east from
the Green Line, Israel’s pre-1967 border. Ariel is part of the
larger "Ariel settlement bloc" which consists of 26 other
West Bank settlements with nearly 40,000 settlers.2
Cutting deep into the heart
of the West Bank, the Ariel settlement bloc separates the northern West
Bank from the rest of the West Bank. U.S. State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher warned against the construction of Israel's wall around
Ariel in June 2004, saying that it would make Palestinian life more
difficult and confiscate Palestinian property.3 Nonetheless, hundreds
of acres of Palestinian land were confiscated for that wall.
If the Ariel settlement bloc
becomes part of Israel through the territorial exchanges proposed by
Israel and supported by the US, it would be disastrous for the Salfit
district's 70,000 residents. Ariel forms a physical barrier. We must
travel around the entire settlement and through Israeli checkpoints
to reach the town of Salfit, our district's "urban center."
It typically took me 90 minutes to drive from my village to Salfit when
I worked there, even though it is only four miles away.
Ariel's settlers prevent
Palestinians from harvesting their olive groves near the colony. They
attack Palestinians, sometimes under the Israeli army's protection.
They have even entered mosques and desecrated the Quran inside.
Although the Salfit district
is located in the West Bank's most water-rich region, our water supplies
have been redirected to Israel and Ariel. According to the Israeli human
rights organization B'Tselem, Israeli settlers consume five times more
water than local Palestinians.4 The nearby villages of Kifr al-Dik and
Bruqin are constantly without enough water for these reasons.
Sewage from the hilltop settlements
and wastewater from Ariel's industrial zone pollute our region. According
to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, 80 factories from Ariel's
Barkan industrial zone discharge 0.81 million cubic meters of wastewater
per year into nearby valleys.5 All this wastewater and the sewage have
formed a river through the agricultural lands of the villages of Kifr
al-Dik and Bruqin. These poisonous streams have led to the death and
ruin of trees and crops located in their immediate vicinity.
Restrictions on our movement,
settler attacks, the diversion of our water and the pollution of our
land, all caused by the Ariel settlement bloc, are destroying Salfit's
economy, and dramatically restricting our rights. Ariel is like a bone
in our throat that is choking us.
Palestinians hope to reach
a peace agreement with Israel, and we are cautiously optimistic about
the upcoming Annapolis, Maryland conference. But Palestinians are most
concerned with getting back their stolen lands. Incorporating settlement
blocs like Ariel into Israel is not a viable solution. Ordinary Palestinians
will not be able to cope unless their rights are restored.
Fareed Taamallah
is a peace activist and journalist who lives in the West Bank village
of Qira in the Salfit district.
[1] http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/
TheHumanitarianImpactOfIsraeliInfrast
ructureTheWestBank_ch1.pdf
[2] http://www.poica.org/editor/
case_studies/view.php?recordID=664
[3] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/
library/news/2004/06/mil-040615-319dee83.htm
[4] http://www.btselem.org/english/
Water/Consumption_Gap.asp
[5] http://www.arij.org/pdf/chapter9.pdf
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