Kafr Jamal
We embarked on our shift while Israelis prepared to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the declaration establishing the state of Israel. That trip to the area captured in 1967 makes salient the connection between 1948 and 1967 and the continuities in Israel’s policy toward its Palestinian citizens and those under its control since 1967.
The jammed roads west of the “Green Line” greatly delayed the start of our shift. We drove to Kafr Jamal to meet K.H. and obtain information about farmers from Kafr Jamal who aren’t permitted to access their fields in the seam zone. We stopped on our way at the Falamya gate in the fence; the time was about three in the afternoon and the gate was open. We understood from talking with some people who’d gone through a few minutes earlier that it was open continuously today also.
K.H. arrived at 15:30. He reported that villagers whose lands are beyond the separation barrier but not adjacent to it are essentially prevented from reaching and cultivating them. Until a year ago here’s how they could reach them: via the Falamya gate, then on foot along the security road between the fences, then to their lands through gates in the fence. A total of five gates. Last year they complained to the DCO and the gates were opened. For about a year they’ve been prevented from using this route “for security reasons,” except for a short time during the olive harvest. The Falamya gate is far from their lands and doesn’t provide access to them.
Even someone who isn’t a farmer knows there are activities, like spraying, which have to be carried out continously to ensure the crops succeed.
During the conversation we learned that before 1948 Kafr Jamal’s lands stretched as far as where Kochav Ya’ir and Tzur Yig’al are now located. According to Mapa’s website
( http://www.mapa.co.il/ng/buildrecord_free.asp?id=3712 ) , in 1948 the village lost approximately 60% of its land.[1] K.H. notes their extent – 14,000 dunums.
Avocados are among the crops Israelis grow today on that land.
People who were uprooted from the village of Miska say that after the 1948 war they were offered lands in Kafr Jamal instead of those they lost during the war. The people of Miska refused, saying “How could we? Why, they’d see us from their windows?”
Back to the present: K.H. will prepare a list of villagers from Kafr Jamal who are prevented from reaching their lands and next week will meet with Karin, from Machsom Watch, to follow up.
[1]Mapa’s website also reports that Kafr Jamal has been identified as the site of a Samaritan locality from the Second Temple period, that the site has been inhabited intermittently since the Persian period and that Jews expelled from Jaffa and Tel Aviv during the first World War found refuge in the village.