We fixed an appointment at the Sanniriya council.

Six Palestinians welcomed us – the honorable intermediary, the head of the council and his aide and a few others who came to tell their story. They all have a prevention, and all know Silvia and her crew. We got the details from them, and will pass them on to Silvia, in the hope that she will solve their problem. One of them told us that only this week Silvia removed his prevention and that of his seven brothers. We heard also about other problems in the village.

The injunction to stop building: About 4-5 months ago, soldiers arrived from the Eyal barrier and informed them that they were prohibited from building at a distance of 600 meters from the dividing fence. They were threatened, that everything that would be built would be destroyed. They went to court which ordered them to stop  building, but at that time they still didn’t get a destruction order. They have a lawyer who deals with the matter. When the fence was built, it was put up in certain points just adjacent to the houses which already existed in the area, so as to distance it from the settlements (Etz Ephraim and Sha’arey Tiqva) and to annex to those most of the area, and now they try to distance every new building and to reduce the possibilities of developing the village. The settlers – as is known – they build up to the fence. They are allowed to do everything.

At Sanniriya there are 3700 people, the total area of Sanniriya, Azzun Atma and Beit Amin together, all of which belongs to one great family, is 13000 Dunams.

The Olive Picking – only about 5% of the Palestinians of Sanniriya got permission to approach their orchards. Those who did get permission, received it for a few days only, and could pick all the olives. One of the families owns 100 dunams of olives but only two people of the family got persmissions. Requests for permission: each one of them submits it separately to the Palestinian DCO. Many didn’t even receive replies.

When they are allowed to go to their land only on olive picking days and they are unable to spray, prune and perform other acts of care, the yield is very sparse.

We asked them to organize an ordered list of land owners and the amount of dunams each owns. We shall try to deal with this. Those who got permission to pass by gate no. 4 – Oranit – are obliged to pass by another barrier inside Oranit. This is managed by a civil company. There they are forced to wait hours until they are given the possibility of passage. The whole day is spent on waiting.

Sewage – We drove to see the sewage that flows from the settlement of Sha’arey Tiqva.

We continued to Kafr Thulth to buy olive oil and from there to the shop at Azzun to deliver parcels.