A visit to Sawiya
Sawiya: We met with the secretary of the Council. He was busy answering telephone questions from people in the village at the same time that he answered our questions. He explained to us that he had been a worker in Israel, but now he isn’t well enough to do physical labor so he is here in the office.
Water: The village receives 15,000 cubes of water from Mekorot each month, so there is no problem.
Electricity: The village is receiving 1 megawatt of electricity per month. This is very limiting and they want to raise it to 2 megawatts. He asked that perhaps Machsom Watch could help.
Education: The schools will be working from September. High schools are separated for boys and girls. The boys’ high school, which serves several villages, is located along the main highway 60. The IDF sometimes enters the school and disrupts classes, and sometimes soldiers bother boys when they are on their way home after school.
Settlements: Eli and Rechalim are set up on land which was taken from Sawiya. But there are no problems with them right now.
Health: There is a clinic in the village. A doctor comes 2 days a week. There is a nurse on duty every day but only for first-aid. For real health problems, they must go to Ramallah or Nablus.
Work: There are 3,000 people in Sawiya. Many men work in Israel. The head of the village Council works in Israel.
Luban Asharkiyah: As we had in the past we went straight to our friend, Amnah, in her mini-market.
A-Sawiya
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A-Sawiya
Located about 18 km south of Nablus.
The population of the village was 2,904 in 2016. In 1983, about 400 dunams, on a hill about a kilometer south of the village, were declared "state lands" and the settlement of Ali was established on them. Over the years, the settlement has expanded to additional lands privately owned by the villagers, and nearby villages in an area of about 1,000 dunams. Only in 2013 was an outline plan prepared for Ali, in which hundreds of illegal structures were approved in its territory. In 2017, a synagogue was built in the Ali settlement, in violation of the law without permits, outside the legal territory of the settlement and on private Palestinian land of a-Sawiya residents.
Over the years, the settlement has expanded to additional lands privately owned by the villagers, and nearby villages in an area of about 1,000 dunams. Only in 2013 was an outline plan prepared for Ali, in which hundreds of illegal structures were approved in its territory. , Outside the legal territory of the settlement and on private Palestinian land of the residents of a-Sawiyah.
Checkpoint Watch companies have been in contact with the village since 2007. They document the checkpoints, the settlers' violence, the sewage problems flowing from the nearby settlements and outposts, and even held knitting and English lessons with women in the village. Even during the Corona we were in telephone contact to help the plight of the residents.
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