Far’un
When we arrived at the council building of Far'un we met C who works as a cleaner at the elementary school. It was the last day of the school winter holiday and she was preparing the classrooms for the lessons. She proudly showed us around the place, which although it is simple and rudimentary, is well looked-after and testifies to care and love.
We met the deputy head of the village, A. The main request of the village inhabitants is to change their seasonal gate (number 708) to an agricultural gate, with all that this implies. This is so that they will be able to return to their hot-houses and the fields where their crops are, which have been denied to them for many years. They submitted their request more than a month ago but no answer has been received. We suggested to them that they should submit another detailed request (in which there should be details of their crops that grew there in the past, and also details of the area concerned , together with its ownership).
Additional complaints were about the difficulties of their tractors’ passage to their land, and cases of fires in which the security fence prevented the Palestinian farmers from extinguishing them. They also complained about the damage to their orchards caused by flocks from Taibeh.
According to them, in 2013 they submitted a total of 780 requests, of which 454 by agricultural and building workers were confirmed; 48 were rejected and 278 were not even answered at all !
We sent a letter to Adel, head of the DCO in which we quoted the villagers’ requests, and also two individual requests from farmers about permits and gates :
Herewith two individual applications which we request you (Adal) to take care of :
1. initials of the person concerned : his permit has not been renewed after 14.1.2014 in spite of two requests which he submitted and which were not answered at all.
2. initials of the person concerned : he had a permit for the Jubara gate (which has been closed). Now he has received a permit for gate 735 which makes it very difficult for him to do his work. He requests that the permit should be changed to gate 708. (He also has a permit to work in Israel)
We also have a complaint of our own : our recent letters to you have remained unanswered or acknowledged, in spite of verbal promises which were given to us by you in the past on the subject of cooperation
Far'un CP
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Far'un CP
A checkpoint near the Palestinian town Far'un, which is located near the Green Line, about 4 kilometers south of Tulkarm . About 5,000 residents (2018) 2,000 people moved abroad and their homes were left empty.
When the separation barrier was built in the early 2000's, about 4,000 dunams owned by the village were separated from the local farmers. In 2009, following a petition by the residents, the Israeli High Court ordered a change in the route of the fence. In May 2011 work began, and in 2013 it was completed. Following the movement of the fence, 1,400 dunams are located within the village area and for the 2,600 dunams remained in the Seam Zone behind the Separation barrier. The can arrive to these only through Far'un agricultural checkpoint 708.
MachsomWatch have been in touch with the village farmer since the early 2000s - visiting and documenting the checkpoint and the township . Over the years, the opening frequency of the checkpoint has changed from time to time: sometimes 3 times a week, sometimes twice a week, and sometimes it closed completely for a certain period without explanation. In addition - the checkpoint is opened usually only twice a day and this makes it difficult to cultivate, because the farmers are not able to stay in the fields all day. Throughout the years there were many delays in opening times the checkpoint and the farmers sometimes have to wait hours until they can go to work their plots.
The most difficult problem is the limited number of permits approved by the Civil Administration for the transition to tillage. Many landowners have problems with lands that are not registered in their name but in the name of a deceased father. Registering is very expensive if the father had several sons and daughters to whom the land belonged after his death. They have no money to transfer their father's land in their name. Before the walls, block settings and gates that do not open, they divided the plot they inherited and had no problems processing. Today everything is complicated. Plots that have not been cultivated for several years may become state lands and pass to the settlers, residents of the seam area.
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