by AMIRA HASS
People in Beit Sahur believe the Israeli settlers who claim that the Israel Defense Forces was responding to the settlers’ pressure when it started erecting a new guard tower last week in the eastern part of this largely Christian West Bank town. Locals do not, however, accept the army’s claim that the tower was added for professional, military reasons. The settlers vow to keep up the pressure – and Beit Sahur residents know all too well what they mean. In the last 18 months, settlers from the Gush Etzion area have been holding increasingly frequent protests against the “Arab construction” in Beit Sahur.
For their part, the settlers say the tower will eventually be integrated into a Jewish city that will connect the Gush Etzion settlement bloc with the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in East Jerusalem. The Beit Sahur residents have no reason to doubt either the settlers or the Har Homa neighborhood committee chairman, who declared that, “This could become a reality, just as Har Homa spilled beyond what was planned and expected.”
After the 1967 war, Beit Sahur lost 1,200 of its 7,000 dunams (1 dunam = 1/4 acre) to Jerusalem, with its greatly expanded municipal borders. Later, another 430 dunams of its land were appropriated by Har Homa, which crowds the town from the north. After various other “small” expropriations – nibbling at territory here and there for the purpose of building bypass roads – Beit Sahur and its 13,000 residents were left with a little over 600 dunams of non-built-up, agricultural land available for development.
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From 1967 to April 27, 2006, much of this territory was occupied by the IDF’s Shdema base; the remainder was declared a closed military area, and sections of it that had been cultivated gradually withered. In 2006 Shdema was relocated, to the relief of all. The locals’ joy, however, proved premature: Back in 1995, Israel had designated those 600 dunams – regardless if the land was publicly or privately owned – as part of Area C. As elsewhere in the West Bank, that designation evolved into a permanent reality on the ground.
About 100 families, owners of the newly freed-up private land, planned to redeem it from the barrenness imposed on it by the IDF when it seized the territory for “security needs.” However, according to Abu Ayman, one of the landowners, Beit Sahur Mayor Hani al-Hayek warned him back in 2006 that under Israeli civil administration regulations for Area C, “heavy machinery” – that is, tractors or bulldozers – could not be used there, under threat of the confiscation of the machinery. Planting and sowing are allowed, says Abu Ayman – who as a young man tended and picked some of Beit Sahur’s famous fakkus fruit, also known as an Armenian cucumber – but land reclamation is prohibited. This holds true for the privately owned agricultural land that stretches across the neighboring hills and the valley between them.
Haaretz for more