‘Atarot
Have you heard about survey lands?
09:00 Setting out from the train station at Rosh Ha'Ayin.
At the Ariel intersection there are two soldiers on the side of the road.
9:30Tapuah intersection
Reenforced troupes. There are about 10 soldiers at the bus station. Two jeeps are parked at the square. A group of soldiers marches on the side of road no. 60, past A-Sawiya. A military jeep and four soldiers are posted at the entrance to Tormusiaya.
9:45 Sinjel
After two weeks we came again to the town, following the news: a report in today's Ha'aretz newspaper describes the building of a new road on Sinjel land, which is defined for this purpose as "survey land".This means this is not area C, not B, and not even A. These are lands that,strangely, no one managed, in the course of 48 years of occupation, to find out who their legal owners are. At the council building we meet the head of the council, S.’ our acquaintance, and he verifies the information, and even substantiates it with photos. That is what had transpires, according to him:
About ten days ago it was revealed that construction of a new road had started, intended to connect the settlements of Shilo, Giv'at Har'el, the illegal outposts Ha-Ro'e, Ma'ale Levona and Aly. A year ago the High Court of Justice determined that the existing road, which had been built on the lands belonging to the inhabitants of Sinjel, would remain for another year. After that it would be replaced by the new, much longer road. During this year the government of Israel abstained from acting in the matter. Ten days ago bulldozers began marking the delineation of the new road without authorization, and without demolishing the existing road. Yesterday S. petitioned to the High Court of Justice in the name of the councils of Sinjel and A-Shrakiya, asking that the illegal construction of the road be stopped. He was promised that an answer would arrive today, and now he is waiting for it.
The head of the council stresses the fact that the area marked for the new road is defined in its entirety as C Zone. How much of the land of the villages will be confiscated? The engineer still is checking the data. Despite all this, S. points out, the olive harvest went by relatively smoothly at Sinjel. The soldiers watched and the inhabitants succeeded in harvesting all the yield of their trees.
When we part S. asks to get the translation of the article in Ha'Aretz. The translation was sent to him on the same day by fax. On the next day, in a telephone conversation, it turns out that the head of the council is still waiting for the High Court of Justice's reply.
10:30 Tormossaya
We arrived here as well in view of the news: it was published in the Israeli media that yesterday a terrorist from the village of Arura attacked soldiers at the entrance to the village. They “neutralized” him to death.
At the entrance to the village there is a military vehicle and five soldiers. Near the entrance there is Ch.'s building material shop. He lived for a few years in the United States and in Puerto Rico. He speaks English and Spanish and is happy to invite us for coffee. Ch. And the people who gather around us have a different version of the event: A group of young Palestinians returned from work in a car. One of them left the car, approached the soldiers and was then shot to death. That very night settlers invaded the village and performed their destructive procedure. Among the damage which was caused, they also broke Ch.'s car window. After the settlers, soldiers entered the village. A patrol of villagers went to meet them, and as a result gas and rubber bullets were shot at them and at the houses of the village.
On leaving the village we are witness to a friendly scene of fraternizing: a group of settlers came to make the soldiers' stay more pleasant. One hand washes the other…
11:30 We drive northwards on road no. 60 and arrive a Yatma, which is located very near to Rehelim settlement. At the council house we meet a few workers, amongst whom is S., who speaks fluent Hebrew. At the beginning of the conversation S. paints a rosy picture: there are no problems with Rehelim and in general there are no complaints. All is well. Only when trust is established the real picture is revealed: 6000 dunams of the village's lands have been confiscated. The settlers regularly cut down olive and almond trees. On one of the few days on which the inhabitants were allowed to pick olives, the stabbing event at the Tapuah intersection took place, and in its wake soldiers arrived and drove the olive pickers away. During the nights soldiers enter the village and look for arms. One of the usual phenomena is the interrogation of children, and their encouragement to inform on grown-ups and on their friends. As a compensation for their cooperation they are promised "only" two months in jail. As a result of the pressure to denounce, a child who was accused of throwing stones and two grown-ups whose charge is not yet clear are in detention. And what about the proximity to Rehelim? If somebody approaches it, he is shot at. Whoever walks on road 60 is attacked.
Apart from security problems, in daily life too there are many problems: The electricity supply is poor, and electrical appliances cannot be used. Water reaches only some of the houses. All is well indeed…
12:15 At the Tapuah intersection the police stops Palestinian cars. On the side of the court there is a military vehicle. There are soldiers at all the intersections.
12:30 Back to Rosh Ha-Ayin.
'Atarot
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Atarot
Atarot was a workers' settlement destroyed during the War of Independence, where the Arab village of Qalandiya now stands, in the southwestern part of Atarot Airport, built by the British Mandate. After 1967, the Atarot industrial zone was established nearby, and until the completion of the wall from the Qalandiya checkpoint to Road 443, a checkpoint was in place. A new Jewish neighborhood is currently planned for the old airport area.
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Sinjil
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Singil
A town with a Maqam
The origin of the town's name is Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles, nicknamed the Count of Toulouse who established a Crusader fortress there in 1198. There is evidence of a settlement in the place as early as the Early Bronze Age.
On the mountain across from the town of Singil, east of Ramallah, the agricultural lands of its ten thousand residents spread out – The beautiful built-up terraces were renovated during the quiet period of the Corona pandemic. Each person and his fields on the way to the hilltop, location of the holy site, Maqam Abu Al ‘Uf, one the prophet Mohammad’s companions. Singil lands amount to 18 thousand dunams. Of these, 9,500 dunams are area C - where the Civil Administration forbids digging a water hole, laying pipes or building a shed to protect against the heat of the day or rain.
Maqam Abu Al ‘Uf stands in the heart of Singil's agricultural lands, on a hill from which the entire town is overlooked. It is an ancient and beautiful place that contains all the elements of Palestinian life in the past, which they embrace with longing. But they are afraid to repair and clean the site with a double fear of the settlers and the civil administration, since the site is in area C, the settlers are trying to appropriate the Muslim site to the Jewish narrative and transfer it to their control. They come and litter site with ship excrement or set up tables for a parties there.
Everything is beautiful, but there is a thorn in it: the Israeli occupation! In January 1978, a group of settlers settled near the village lands, under the guise of an archaeological dig camp in the nearby Tel Shiloh. Today Singil and its lands are surrounded by the huge settlements: Shiloh, Eli, Ma'ale Levona and their outposts: Giv’at Har’el, Giv’at Ha-Ro’eh (which the government approved to become a settlements) that more and more of the lands of Singil are annexed by one trick or another to the settlements. Another addition is the violent outpost called "Nahal Shiloh" from which a settler to attacks the Palestinian farmers, attempts to destroy terraces and send his herds to the Palestinian fields. Adjacent to the outpost is an Israeli army.
Of the 10,000 residents who live in the town, 400 people work in Israel and depend on work permits. They leave at three in the morning through four exits manned by soldiers from the nearby army camp who are held up by ID checks. 12,000 residents left over the years to other countries, mainly to the United States.
As part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, over the years there have been dozens of incidents of mutual violence between the residents of the village and Jewish residents of the area and the IDF forces. Including a settlers’ pogrom in May 2023.
Immediately after the horrific massacre carried out by the Hamas organization in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, all the village entrances were blocked with stones and piles of dirt. There is no going out and no coming except for one checkpoint in the direction of Ramallah where a military guard allows one out of ten applicants to leave.
Updated October 2023
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Turmus Aya
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Turmus Aya is a beautiful and well-kept Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bira governorate, located in the Shiloh Valley, about 22 km north of Ramallah. Near Highway 60 at an altitude of about 732 m. In 2016, 4,781 residents lived in the town. After the 2nd intifada in 2001, hundreds immigrated to the US, but they come in the summer to visit their families and live in the nice houses they built.
Israel expropriated 752 dunams of the town's land for the establishment of the Shiloh settlement, in 1978, and another 372 dunams for the establishment of the Shebot Rachel settlement in 1992. According to the Oslo Agreement, the built-up area of TAos Aya was classified as area B. This area constitutes 64.7% of the town's land, and the rest, 35.3%, is area C.
Starting in 2015, the town's residents often suffer from harassment from the settlers of the Adi Ad outpost, which include the uprooting and cutting of olive trees, the burning of wheat fields and the spraying of anti-Netzka inscriptions.
On June 21, 2023, dozens of young people from outposts and surrounding settlements carried out a pogrom in broad daylight after the funeral of the victims of the attack that occurred two days earlier at the gas station in the settlement of Eli. The attack took place after the Israel Defense Forces' invasion of Jenin and the killing of innocents in the process - an invasion that took place after a previous event... and so on, deep into the non-stop blood equation that is always presented in Israel as terror attacks without context. They set fire to about 60 cars and about 30 houses with their occupants and threw stones, fire grenades and even shot from guns.The IDF soldiers watched the attack but didn't intervene. A villager was killed by soldier fire. Only 3 settlers were arrested after a few days, but charges have not yet been filed against them.
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