Occupied Jerusalem -

When the village of Beit Ijza (northwest of occupied Jerusalem) is mentioned, the story of the Gharib family turns into a home in the heart of a settlement after being besieged by outposts and then by the apartheid wall, followed by a tunnel, electronic wires and iron gates.

Before his death, Sabri Gharib, the son of the village, owned 100 dunams (a dunam is a thousand square meters), and built his house in the middle of it, but the Israeli occupation besieged it with settlement outposts, then the apartheid building wall came in 2003 and removed Gharib’s house from its surroundings in the village of Beit Ijza, to be confiscated by the occupation in stages A total of 60 dunums of family land.

The occupation dug a tunnel at the entrance to the house, then built a bridge over it, and set up an iron gate to control the entry and exit of the family through it, then surrounded the house with electronic barbed wire, and installed surveillance cameras connected to the Israeli police station, all of this to tighten the siege on the family and secure the settlers around it.

The "Givat Hadashah" settlement, at the top of the picture, swallows hundreds of dunams of the lands of the Jerusalem village of Beit Ijza (Al-Jazeera)

wide blockade

The reality of the Gharib family is the case of the village of Beit Ijza in general, which is 11 kilometers away from the center of the occupied city of Jerusalem, but its people are prohibited from entering it and are allowed to build on only 365 dunums out of 4,500 dunums, and farmers cannot cultivate their lands or harvest their crops without prior Israeli permission.

Beit Ijza was a safe village whose people were engaged in raising and grazing livestock in its vast green lands. They also practiced growing grapes, figs, olives and wheat and selling them in the nearby ancient markets of Jerusalem.

However, this disappeared completely after 2003, when the construction of the apartheid wall erected by the occupation began to isolate Jerusalem and the territories occupied in 1948 from the rest of the Palestinian territories. This wall devoured 1,500 dunums of the village’s lands, and prevented its residents from entering Jerusalem after classifying it within the lands of the West Bank.


Jerusalem near far

Today, the population of the village of Beit Ijza is 1,000 people, divided into several main families: Sheikh, Diwan, Abu Jaber, Eid, Gharib, Abdel Halim, Mari, Mansour, and Abu Kafia.

The head of the village council in the village, Muhammad Shaker Marei (54 years old), recalls his memories when he was a child, and says, "Until 1992, I did not go to any place other than Jerusalem because of its proximity. The distance from my village to Damascus Gate did not exceed 7 minutes through the village of al-Ram or Nabi Samuel. As for Today it takes hours.

Marei told Al-Jazeera Net that all residents of the villages northwest of Jerusalem - who number 70,000 people - can only enter the city through the Qalandia checkpoint, provided they have entry permits.

On a time he will not forget, Merhi recalls, "It was four o'clock in the morning in Ramadan, and I arrived at the Damascus Gate and jumped two meters from the intensity of joy. I will not forget these moments as long as I live," and this is when he was able to enter occupied Jerusalem after 12 years of Israeli prohibition, recalling the "Shami road." His ancestors passed through it before the occupation, as it connected Jerusalem to the city of Jaffa and passed through villages northwest of Jerusalem, including Beit Ijza.

Activist Muhammad Nimr Abu Kafia says that the people of his village paid their lives to protest the construction of the separation wall (Al-Jazeera)

A prisoner feels free

In turn, the activist Muhammad Nemer Abu Kafia, head of the village council, shares his longing for Jerusalem, saying, "I am 50 years old and I have been banned from entering it for 26 years. Traveling to America has become easier than visiting Jerusalem, and the only time I entered the city was when the occupation arrested me, then I felt as if I liberated."

Abu Kafia occupies the position of secretary of the "Wall Martyrs' Area" in the Fatah movement, in reference to the first two martyrs in the village of Beit Ijza, Zakaria Eid and Muhammad Rayan, who were killed by the occupation and wounded 19 Palestinians during a protest organized by hundreds of villagers against the construction of the apartheid wall on Their lands in 2004, where protests and confrontations with the occupation continue from that year until today on a weekly basis, and at a point of contact that does not subside.


An alien settlement

The occupation built a settlement called "Givat Hadashah" in 1978 on the lands of the village of Beit Ijza, as it began in the form of mobile homes that doubled in number in 1990, to later develop into housing units that swallowed up most of the lands.

Abu Kafia says that the wall was built as a cover for the plundering of lands and not only to secure the settlement and its neighbor "Givat Ze'ev", adding that the occupation prevented Palestinian construction in the lands adjacent to the wall, and it is difficult to obtain building permits throughout the village.

A settler street surrounded by a barbed wire wall that seizes 1,500 dunums of Beit Ijza land (Al-Jazeera)

Reducing agricultural and animal production

The wall and settlement reduced grazing areas, which led to the dispensation of 70% of the village's residents from all or some of their livestock. The head of the Beit Ijza Association, Flaifel Al-Sheikh (47 years old), told Al-Jazeera Net how he used to graze sheep in his childhood with his grandfather and father in the pastures of the village and nearby villages, and he was The herd moves freely for tens of kilometers, but that has passed due to the settlement, so that the sheikh witnessed the reduction of his family's livestock from 150 to 20 heads only.

The sheikh also testified that his family stopped selling milk and fresh milk in the markets of occupied Jerusalem, in addition to tons of municipal grapes. For 15 years, he did not enter Jerusalem like the rest of his peers, and his village, Beit Ijza, did not return the food basket for Jerusalem as it was before, due to the wall that reduced agricultural and animal production and cut off communication. human.

Israeli settlements swallow the lands of villages northwest of Jerusalem (Al-Jazeera)

Harvest with prior permission

The apartheid wall separates the people from their agricultural lands, where the occupation controls the times of harvesting crops or caring for the land.

According to the head of the village council, Muhammad Marei, the grape season is wasted because the occupation allows farmers to enter only 3 days per season, and deliberately delays entry until the crops are damaged and the ideal date for harvesting is missed.

The occupation tried to impose individual permits on the villagers to coordinate their entry to their lands during the olive harvest season (some individuals are allowed and others are prohibited), but they refused and forced it to allow the landowners to enter to harvest their crops for a whole month, but the occupation controls the opening and closing times of the gate to the lands through wall.

"Farmers take advantage of the olive harvest season to plow and take care of their lands, and they accompany their children and grandchildren to connect them to their land despite attempts to separate them from it," Marei says, as he was preparing himself to participate in the village cleaning activity with the participation of volunteers from the residents and their children to preserve its facilities despite the strict siege.