Hawara and Burin - The very fabric of life destroyed
The meeting with Doha, on the porch of her house in Burin, was very warm and very moving for all of us, after nearly three years of not meeting. In Burin and Hawara, through which you reach Burin via the old route 60 – the change is great. At both places the occupation has escalated. The once lively and busy Hawara has become an almost empty town. Shop and auto repair gates are shut. All the signs in Hebrew are gone. Yellow Palestinian taxis waiting on the side of the road for passengers seemed like a new phenomenon, but perhaps, just as Mustafa suggested, they just stand out against the empty background. We drove only on the old Route 60, the usual route to Burin and Nablus. The new Route 60, stretching sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left of Huwara, and then jumping over it on a bridge, is a road for Jews only, an apartheid road that changed the area beyond recognition and severely damaged the fabric of life in Hawara Burin, Madama, Asira al-Qibliya and Urif.
Conversation with Doha and Mona was conducted in English and Arabic, and was intense and honest. The questions focused on changes in the economic security situation and accessibility between places, and also brought up pleasant memories of the harvest in the family orchard and the meeting at the Herzliya beach, in the “Min El Bahar” project.
But first, a few words about Doha, the mother and the amazing woman who is a farmer who set up a greenhouse inside the village, as the settler attacks on her land increased. She is an excellent cook who has twice won the prize for “Slow Food” cooking in an annual competition held in Turin, Italy. She also serves as a tour-guide for groups of women from the surrounding villages, who visit, sometimes for the first time in their lives, at the the Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi Mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs) and also in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. In the past, many many such visits to Al-Aqsa were allowed, but today only once a year, on the fifth day of Ramadan.
We have known Mona, Doha’s talented and beautiful daughter, since she was 17. We interviewed her then near the school, talking about her determination to finish her matriculation exam in class while the settlers from “Yitzhar” were throwing stones at the school windows (this conversation was filmed on video). Today, Mona is 25 years old, a distinguished student at An-Najah University. She is studying for her master’s degree in international law and human rights, and aspires to be a journalist and activist. Mona is engaged to a Norwegian citizen, the son of a Palestinian immigrant, born in a village in the Jerusalem area. The couple plans to initially live in Spain.
The conversation dealt with family and community life under the occupation and the changes that have occurred in recent years. We received a detailed microcosm of a family that speaks to the whole. The very trust in us, women of the occupying nation, is not taken for granted. I felt the trust in the sincerity of the conversation and also in a special moment when I recommended to Mona the information provided by the Kerem Navot Facebook site on the subject of the occupation. Looking closely at me, she asked: “Can I trust them?” I answered wholeheartedly with a “yes” and felt that she believed and trusted me.
I will try to summarize four points from the conversation:
- Restriction of freedom of movement on the roads and lengthening of the commute: Three checkpoints were set up in Burin. A 10-15 minute trip from Burin to Nablus became 3.5 hours each way on average. The family business, which was based on transportation, collapsed as a result of the unprofitability for passengers (the Hawara bypass and checkpoints) in addition to the payments for licenses and insurance. For Musa, the son who learned to drive a truck, no job is in sight.
- Land Dispossession: The family was dispossessed of 60% of its land, and the remaining 40% is at risk from repeated attacks by settlers. This was the reason for renting land in the village itself for a greenhouse, which is currently not operating due to the cost of renting and the resulting economic unviability. (As a result of the loss of land and personal security in cultivating what remained, to what extent did the family’s olive oil production decrease? This is an important question that I unfortunately did not ask.)
- Invasion of personal phones for surveillance is carried out both by invading homes with weapons and at checkpoints. This invasion reduces the freedom of the individual and the organization in groups and suffocates those who share important information for survival in times of distress from settler attacks. In addition, this action allows the invaders to locate other phone numbers in the group and as a result – many people leave the group and put themselves at risk. It turns out that either way it is dangerous and the terror and anxiety are increasing. This criminal practice has serious consequences for the lives of Palestinians under occupation, who at any moment could be arrested and held in administrative detention without trial and for an unlimited period of time.
- The escalation of attacks within the village itself by settlers accompanied by IDF soldiers throwing stones and tear gas between the village houses for no apparent reason. It is clear to both that a significant portion of the troops are members or residents of the same settlements from which the attacks are initiated, whether from the “Giv’at Ronen” outpost of the “Bracha” settlement or from the violent “Yitzhar” settlement and its outposts. Just recently, Doha herself was injured in such an invasion of the village and lost her voice as a result of inhaling tear gas. Throughout the entire meeting, she whispered almost silently, I very much hope that in the meantime she has recovered and her brave, clear, heartfelt voice has returned to her.
I admit that I went on this shift with serious concerns about passing through Huwara, concerns I had to overcome in order to arrive at Burin. On my way back from Burin, after meeting with friendly and welcoming Palestinians both at a well-known and beloved restaurant and at a well-known snack shop, I realized that it was time for us, the opponents of the occupation, to come now to Huwara – the town against which the strongest tactics of violent erasure were employed, culminating in isolation because of fear. Next time we will arrange a meeting with the mayor and Munir Mish Din, for example. Maybe also in preparation for a tour for the general public.
And finally: If I owned a car, I would bring it in for repair with complete confidence and trust in Iman – the owner of the garage across from the restaurant, who learned his trade and Hebrew at a repair shop on Hamasger Street in Tel Aviv. He lives in Nablus and very cordially invited us to the excellent knafeh in the old city of Nablus. Truly, the most delicious knafeh I have ever eaten.
Location Description
Burin (Yitzhar)
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Burin (Yitzhar)
This is a Palestinian village in the Nablus governorate, a little south of Nablus, on the main road passing through the West Bank. The settlements: Yitzhar and Har Bracha, settled in locations that surrounded the village, placed fences so it is cut off the main road.
There are around 4000 inhabitants. Most of them are engaged in agriculture and pasture, although many graduates of the two secondary schools continue to study at the university. Academic positions are hardly available, they find work as builderd, or leave for the Gulf countries.
The village lands were appropriated several times for the establishment of Israeli settlements and military bases, and as a result, Burin's land and water resources dwindled. lSince 1982, more than 2,000 dunams of village land have been declared "state land" and then transferred to Har Bracha settlement.
Over the past few years and more so since 2017, the villagers have been terrorized by the residents of Yitzhar and Har Bracha, the Givat Ronen outpost and others. Despite the close proximity of soldiers to an IDF base close to one of the village's schools, residents are suffering from numerous stone-throwing events, vehicle and fire arson, also reported in the press.
In 2023, the prevention of the olive harvest in the village plot was more violent than ever. Soldiers and settlers walked with drawn weapons between the houses of the village and demanded that people stop harvesting in the village itself and in the private plots outside the village. The settlers from Yitzhar and Giv'at Roned raided the olive groves and stole crops. 300 olive trees belonging to the residents of Burin, near Yitzhar, were uprooted. The loss of livelihood from the olives causes long-term economic damage to the farmers' families, bringing them to the point of starvation.
(updated for November 2023)
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Huwwara
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The Huwwara checkpoint is an internal checkpoint south of the city of Nablus, at the intersection of Roads 60 and 5077 (between the settlements of Bracha and Itamar). This checkpoint was one of the four permanent checkpoints that closed on Nablus (Beit Furik and Awarta checkpoints to the east and the Beit Iba checkpoint to the west). It was a pedestrian-only barrier. As MachsomWatch volunteers, we watched therre since 2001 two shifts a day - morning and noon, the thousands of Palestinians leaving Nablus and waiting for hours in queues to reach anywhere else in the West Bank, from the other side of the checkpoint the destination could only be reached by public transport. In early June 2009, as part of the easing of Palestinian traffic in the West Bank, the checkpoint was opened to vehicular traffic. The passage was free, with occasional military presence in the guard tower. Also, there were vehicle inspections from time to time. Since the massacre on 7.10.2023, the checkpoint has been closed to Palestinians.
On February 26, 2023, about 400 settlers attacked the town's residents for 5 hours and set fire to property, such as houses and cars. Disturbances occurred in response to a shooting of two Jewish residents of Har Bracha by a Palestinian Terrorist. The soldiers stationed in the town did not prevent the arson and rescued Palestinian families from their homes only after they were set on fire. No one was punished and Finance Minister Smotrich stated that "the State of Israel should wipe out Hawara." Left and center organizations organized solidarity demonstrations and support actions for the residents of Hawara.Hawara continued to be in the headlines in all the months that followed: more pogroms by the settlers, attacks by Palestinians and a massive presence of the army in the town. It amounted to a de facto curfew of commerce and life in the center of the city. On October 5, 2023, MK Zvi established a Sukkah in the center of Hawara and hundreds of settlers backed the army blocked the main road and held prayers in the heart of the town all night and the next day. On Saturday, October 7, 23 The "Swords of Iron" war began with an attack by Hamas on settlements surrounding Gaza in the face of a poor presence of the IDF. Much criticism has been made of the withdrawal of military forces from the area surrounding Gaza and their placement in the West Bank, and in the Hawara and Samaria region in particular, as a shield for the settlers who were taking over and rioting.
On November 12, 2023, the first section of the Hawara bypass road intended for Israeli traffic only was opened. In this way, the settlers can bypass the road that goes through the center of Hawara, which is the main artery for traffic from the Nablus area to Ramallah and the south of the West Bank. For the construction of the road, the Civil Administration expropriated 406 dunams of private land belonging to Palestinians from the nearby villages. The settlers are not satisfied with this at the moment, and demand to also travel through Hawara itself in order to demonstrate presence and control.(updated November 2023)
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Shoshi AnbarMay-18-2025Huwara: The old houses in Area C
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