Etzion DCL

Whose land is it?

10:40 When we arrived many people were standing in front of the GSS office. It turned out that most of them were from Samoa, near Hebron. They said that a short time ago, as they were cultivating their lands, a settler arrived (apparently his name is Shai) and claimed that the land was his. He claimed that he bought 684 acres from Palestinians. We talked With Hagit Ofran and she said that some time ago, Jews claim they bought the land in the 1980s and 1990s. The people we talked to said they never sold their land. They know that one neighbor, who has died since, sold his land. They signed a document stating they knew that the land that had been sold belonged to the man who sold it and they testified on that only. They have a 1985 document and a similar document from 1990, issued by the Civil Administration, and tax documents, which prove that they own the land they are cultivating and that they have owned it since the Ottoman days. At the time, they went to Turkey in order to get the paperwork from the Turkish Land Authority.

A man who has land in Kiryat Arba contacted us and said that when he worked his land, his tractor was confiscated. Another person, a resident of ‘Anin, said that a month ago soldiers fired tear gas into his homes. One of the injured children was hospitalized. We gave him the phone number for "Yesh Din".