We drove with Mustafa at 9 a.m. from Rosh HaAyin train station, going first to a meeting at the local council of Iskaka village, population  around 1,000 in the Salfit district, between Ariel city settlement (built on some of its land) and Tapuach settlement .

The State of Israel has seqeuestered 356 dunams from Iskaka land to build the settlements  of Ariel and Nofei Nahemya, as well as the separation barrier east of Ariel. 25% of Iskaka labd were defined Area B, and the rest Area C.

Plan to change definition from Area C to Area B, presented by the Iskaka local council to the Civil Administration at Beit El

We met local council members and inhabitants who spoke about their problems. A retired teacher tols us he could not pick olives in his grove which is close to the “new” settlement of Nofei Nehemya because of its settlers’ violence. When he got close to his grove, a settler came with soldiers and chased him away.

The settlement of Nofei Nehemya was built in 2002 illegally as a distant neighborhood of the settlement Rechelim (on the other side of Road 60), and it too was declared “legal” only in 2012 (after in 2003, 1,300 dunams in the area were declared state land).

Inside the blue line designating the borders of Rechelim, Nofei Nehemya is included, and only in 2021 did the Civil Administration ratify the planning of Rechelim and in it Nofei Nehenya as well.

The council representative told us of economic hardships after a year and a quarter during which about half of the men in the village who had worked inside Israel are unemployed. They live on what they grow in their small domestic garden.  This lack of employment also causes social problems. The PA has ceased paying full salaries, and does it late. Teachers received their December pay only at mid-January. Released prisoners were arrested when war broke out, without explanation, and are still imprisoned. When the attack took place at Al Funduk, the village of Iskaka was closed with checkpoints for two days. Their main problem is with settlers.

We went on a small tour with an accompanier to the last houses of the village  to the south – and he asked us not to pass them for fear of the soldiers and the settlers who have their houses adjacent to the village fence. The last house was inhabited in the past but the family left because of settler harassment. He showed us plantings of settlers on village land.

We went to Yasuf village. We were welcomed by the head of the local council, and along our talk more men joined, to contribute information and also on a gigantic TV screen we saw several areas in the Gaza Strip, lice or in loop, all tense before the ceasefire and release of the three hostage women.

There are 2,400 inhabitants in the village. Here too they suffer mainly from settlers and soldier violence. 80% of the men worked in Israel and are unemployed for a year and a quarter already. The army enters the village every day. Until lately the main entrance from Road 60 near Tapuach settlement was blocked and villagers had to take bypass roads.

The olive groves which they could access in the past pending coordination with the army, have been left out of bounds for them sice the beginning of the war and they could not harvest them. We heard a detailed report of several of their settlers neighbors’ main harassments from Nofei Nehemya (named after the owner of a crane firm that helped a lot in founding settlements), who reach even the privately-owned Yasuf villagers’ fields – their owners are allowed to tend them without coordination – break olive trees, disrupt work, and try to set houses on fire. They also seriously damage the main electricity pole. They told us about a group that came in August with bulldozers to destroy entire groves. 

Leaving the place, we received four printed pages containing a list of 46 hostility events. My friend R. translated them. They are attacked here as well. Then we hear the settlers complain that the army abandons them….