Feature: Israeli settlers turn life of northern West Bank family into nightmare
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E-mail Xinhua, March 31, 2013
In spite of more than 10 years of harassment and suffering, Hani Amer and his family are still sticking to their house and land in the outskirts of an Israeli settlement which was built on his land in the northern West Bank city of Salfit.
Amer, better known as Abu Nidal, in his mid 50s, said "I mark this special day with more determination to stay in my house and on my land, despite the lesion caused by the Israeli soldiers and the Jewish settlers."
His house and land looked like an island surrounded by the Israeli settlement on one side and by the separation wall that Israel builds in the West Bank on the other. Abu Nidal's house and land are three acres (1.2 hectares) only, where it used to be 23 acres (9.3 hectares) and most of it was confiscated to expand the adjacent settlement.
After a long-term legal battle with the support of Israeli and Palestinian right groups, Abu Nidal managed to grab his right of getting into his house and land. "I received many attractive Israeli offers to leave my house and land, and I always refuse," he said.
In June 2002, Israel started to build a separation wall on the Palestinian lands adjacent to the borders between Israel and the West Bank under a claim that building the wall aimed at preventing Palestinian militants from infiltrating into Israel for carrying out attacks.
The Palestinians, including Abu Nidal, said that the Israeli claim was just an excuse to keep confiscating more and more Palestinian lands and expand the settlements. "The settlements had turned our lives into nightmares," Abu Nidal said, adding that " the wall and settlements are restricting our free movement."
According to Palestinian statistic centers, the length of the wall that Israel is still building on the West Bank lands reached 780 km, adding that 61 percent of it had been already finalized. The wall had isolated 12 percent of the Palestinians living in their villages and restricted their free movement.
Abu Nidal and his family, including the children, spoke about their day-by-day suffering. They said "the Israeli soldiers tried to prevent us from leaving our house or getting back to it if we leave, but we didn't mind and kept living in our house."
"After the International Committee of the Red Cross intervened, the UN and the Palestinian Authority interfered; we managed to live a sort of a normal life and we were able to freely go out and come back to our house at any time by getting a key for the Israeli metal gate," said Abu Nidal.
He noted that after their success in getting a key for the metal gate of the area, "the settlers are trying by all means to kick us out from our house. Their assaults had recently increased. They throw stones at our house, sometimes they fire into the air and sometimes we fight by hands."
The suffering of Abu Nidal and his family increased when the Israeli army stationed cameras along the wall that surrounds his house and placed them at the settlement. He said his suffering mounted when cameras were directed at his house to watch him and his family.
"Whatever the Israelis do, I will never leave my house. Whenever I receive visitors and relatives who come to visit me, the soldiers punish me and confiscated the key of the metal gate outside my house, and they force me and my family to stay in one room for several days, and then they give us the key."
Issam Bakker, the Palestinian governor of Salfit, said that Amer's family "is an amazing example of the Palestinian struggle of defending the land and sticking to it," adding that the Palestinian authority had backed his struggle to keep living on his land and in his house.
"The isolation wall had confiscated most of the town's lands, leaving big damages to the residents and the farmers in addition to the growing settlement all over the area of Salfit," said Bakker, adding "We still believe that the wall and the settlement will one day get uprooted because they are all illegal."
The Court of Justice in the Hague decided in 2003 that the wall Israel builds on the West Bank "is illegal," and called on Israel to remove it and compensate the Palestinians for confiscating their lands and farms. But Israel rejected the court's decision and kept building the wall and expanding settlement.
Nesfat al-Khuffash, chairman of the national corporation of the Palestinian NGOs, told Xinhua that the Israeli army had confiscated more than 30,000 acres (12,141 hectares) of Salfit's land for the construction of the wall, and built up 21 settlements on its lands."
Al-Khuffash called on the Palestinian Authority to convey the case of Abu Nidal and his family to the international courts "to sue Israel for its crimes against the Palestinians in the West Bank," adding that "what Israel does in the West Bank is a real awful crime."
Abu Nidal said "all the days of the year for me and my family are land days, we tell Israel we will never leave our house and our land, and we prefer to die and be buried because land for us means life and if they take it they will take our life." Endi
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