‘Azzun, Isla, Nabi Ilyas, Qadum
Stores are open in Nabi Ilyas, few shoppers. The entrance to ‘Izbet Tabib is open, the village is quiet.
09:30 Isla. No one at the meeting place. We drove around the village, ran into the son of one of the coordinators who’d forgotten to tell his mother about the meeting. After waiting half an hour we decided to leave.
I’ll find out how to contact them more effectively to arrange meetings.
10:00 ‘Azzun. Quiet. Shops are open, few young people in the streets. People rise later on Friday and attend prayer in the afternoon.
10:40 Qaddum. Children in the streets holding slings, ready for the weekly demonstration.
We met a group of men on the blocked road who told us that electricity to the village was cut off at midnight, not for the first time and with no advance notice. The residents think it’s collective punishment, the army’s way of pressuring them to cease the weekly demonstrations. The DCL told them it was a local outage; Palestinian engineers were sent to locate its source. While we were there they returned from the area to which Palestinians are forbidden access and said the problem is on the Israeli side, i.e. the IEC. I spoke to the emergency operations room; they told me the outage will be fixed after the demonstration. When I checked again after 17:00 I was told electricity had been restored.
Meanwhile we sat talking with the men. They told us that since the demonstrations had begun eight years earlier a total of some 200 villagers had been arrested. Today 14 people are being held.
20 demonstrators have been injured from live fire during recent weeks, four of them seriously and still hospitalized, bullets in their bodies. About fifty others have been injured by tear gas canisters fired at them, one with a serious head wound. They showed us photos of bullets that had been removed from the demonstrators.
One man said to us, “This is our road. They have to give it back. The struggle won’t end until they return it to us. We’ve been here hundreds of years; the settlement was established in 1975. The road on which we’re walking was built by the British.” All the villagers are united and determined to keep struggling until justice is done and their road reopens. While we were there they began preparing for the weekly demonstration. A group of children practiced with slings by the roadside; the adults climbed the hill from which the soldiers observe them and fire tear gas and tried to locate them among the olive trees; youths arrived with gas masks.
We Israelis have much to learn from them about the dignified manner in which they’re fighting for justice and their right to travel freely on the main road to their village.
12:00 ‘Azzun. An army jeep at the entrance, soldiers alongside. The oppressive routine.
At the plant nurseries we were told that the police cars that came three days ago were looking for people in Israel illegally. One was caught. A fantastic success…
On Highway 55, near the Bedouin bidonville, 5-6 police cars on the roadside.
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'Azzun
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Azoun (updated February 2019)
A Palestinian town situated in Area B (under civil Palestinian control and Israeli security control),
on road 5 between Nablus and Qalqiliya, east of Nabi Elias village. The inhabitants are allowed to construct and improve infrastructures. The Separation Fence has confiscated lands belonging to the town's people. In 2018 olive tree groves owned by one of its inhabitants were confiscated for the sake of paving a road to bypass Nabi Elias. Azoun population numbers 13,000, its economic state dire. Its infrastructures are poor, neglect and poverty rampant. In the meantime, the town council has completed paving an internal road for the inhabitants' welfare.
Because of its proximity to the Jewish settler-colony of Karnei Shomron and its outposts, the town suffers the intense presence of the Israeli army, especially at nighttime: soldiers enter homes, arrest suspects, trash the house and sometimes ruin it, as they do in numerous places in the West Bank. At times a checkpoint closes the entrance to the town, so no one can come in or get out.
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A-Nabi Elias
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A-Nabi Elias this is a Palestinian village in the northern West Bank, east of Qalqilia on Road 55, north-east of Alfei Menashe colony and west of Karnei Shomron colony and the Palestinian city of Nablus. As of 2016, the village was populated by 1,458 inhabitants.
Near the village is a maqam (holy site memorializing a sanctified person) - the prophet Elisha. Until 2021 Road 55 crossed the village. Then a bypass road was paved through olive groves that were sequestered from the villagers. Consequently, the farmers were left with small olive groves that they could not access nor cultivate. Inhabitants protested against the road for weeks, supported by peace activists, but nothing helped and the road is now a given fact.
The village's main street had been a shopping center for all residents, including colonists. We even saw a Kashrut (kosher food) inspector in a butcher shop close to the falafel stand… The bypass road, according to tradesmen, has impacted their businesses and clients, while others claim that there are customers now for parking has become easier.
Alfei Menashe and Tzofim colonies nibble at the village lands from the north and south and get closer to it all the time. Colonists of Alfei Menashe have outdone themselves, sending their surplus sewage from the oxygenation pools toward a-Nabi Elias land, even reaching the houses.
The villagers are known as seekers of peace. For years there was no hostility towards Israelis. On the contrary, we were always welcomed warmly and stopped there to enjoy their delicious, inexpensive falafel.
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Qaddum
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Qaddum
The village of Qaddum dates back approximately 4,000 years. Today’s villagers mostly work in agriculture and cultivae olive groves. The hilly landscape is covered with olive trees and are dotted with patches of green fields.
Qaddum was attached to the district of Nablus until 1994 at which time it joined the Qalqiliya district. The village is home to 4,000 inhabitants (2013), with 22,000 dunams (5,400 acres) of which 11,000 dunam (2700 acres) are in Area C*. Access to Area C requires coordination with the Israeli army, which means that access is almost non-existent.
The settlement of Kedumim was founded in 1975 on lands belonging to the ancient the village of Qaddum. Since then, Kedumim has expanded to include 5 settlements. The Kedumim settlements separate Qaddum village from its lands and from access to the main road. The road connecting Qaddum village to Route 55 was closed to its residents in 2003. The short ride (1.5 km or less than a mile) between Qaddum and a neighboring village - Jit, turned into a 12 km (7.5 miles) bumpy ride on an unpaved gravely road. Since 2004, residents of the village of Qaddum have been submitting requests to the authorities to reopen the old road leading to Route 55.
On July 2011, the villagers began holding weekly demonstrations in protest of the road closure and of the theft of their lands. They march to the edge of the village and there they stop. There is a regular routine to the demonstration which always follows with a confrontation with the army when it enters the village at the end of the blocked road. The army reacts to the demonstrations with sharp weapons, rubber bullets, tear gas and lately also live ammunition. Villagers are injured and hurt each week and often, dozens are arrested by the army. Young people and children are intimidated by the army when they photos are posted in the village streets.
On 12/7/19 a 10 year old boy was criticaaly wounded after he was shot in the head by live ammunition while standing at the entrance to his home in Qaddum during a demonstration.*Area C is an administrative division of the West Bank established by the Oslo II Accords in 1995. The Palestinian Authority is responsible for medical and education services and Israel is responsible for infrastructure and administration.
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