Bethlehem Area Besieged by Settlement Expansion As It Prepares for Millennium Celebration

By Maureen Meehan

Salah Ta’mari, Palestinian Legislative Council representative from the Bethlehem district and author of an “Appeal to Rescue Bethlehem,” believes the situation in and around Bethlehem has become extremely critical as the town undergoes renovations and preparations for the Bethlehem 2000 millennium celebration.

“If Israel continues with its plans for Bethlehem, it will deal a death blow to this city and the towns and farmland around it,” said Ta’mari, who is chairman of the PLC’s Land and Settlement Committee. “The planned expansion of settlements on Bethlehem land will ultimately destroy the future of the city. Israel’s plan is to complete a circle of settlements around Bethlehem that will effectively cut the city off from its own countryside and the rest of the West Bank, leaving it no room to grow, to breathe and to satisfy the natural needs of a city this size.”

Ta’mari said it was difficult to determine the number of acres of land areas being confiscated but that it does not matter. What is important, he says, is the Israeli government’s push to strengthen its grip over the occupied territories by seizing and expanding existing settlements or building new ones on the largest possible areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The well-researched report was released by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment (LAW). The report revealed that in 1998 and early 1999 the Israeli government completed work on 8 of 14 approved settlement expansion projects on nearly 9,000 dunams (one dunam equals 1,000 square meters) of confiscated Palestinian land, yielding nearly the same number of housing units for Jewish settlers. During that same period, 11 new settlement sites were established in various parts of the West Bank, including Bethlehem.

The Bethlehem district, where settlements currently cover 8,129 dunams of confiscated Palestinian land, has been drawing more attention as the millennium approaches and the city becomes the focus of what Palestinians hope will be a positive year of tourism and local observances.

Ta’mari says there has been a “furious pace of settlement expansion in this region” and that aggressive actions by Jewish settlers living in the Bethlehem district have become increasingly bold and increasingly frequent.

The settlement of Efrat has been steadily sprawling over the hills surrounding Bethlehem on land snatched by Jewish settlers who often arrive in their own bulldozers and cut down olive trees to clear the land. Since January, their bulldozers have destroyed hundreds of dunams of Palestinian land in and around the villages of Artas, El Khader and southern Bethlehem, including ancient sites, stone walls and land belonging to a Catholic monastery.

Historic City

Artas is a small village in a fertile valley about one kilometer south of Bethlehem. Most of the village’s stone houses that sit on one side of the small valley—famous for its lettuce and other produce—have a breathtaking view of the famous convent of Hortus Conclusus (Closed Garden), which is run by the Sisters of St. Mary. The convent, which houses an orphanage and day-care center, appears to be built into the mountainside. Just beyond the valley lie Solomon’s Pools, which were used in Roman times to supply water to Jerusalem.

The Jewish Efrat settlement, with its square, orange-roofed apartment buildings and trailers, also looks down from the hilltop onto the convent in Artas. The Sisters of St. Mary complain that Efrat settlers are stealing land from them and have begun to set up caravans in their fruit orchards.

Israeli authorities have acknowledged that Efrat’s settler activity, land clearing and attempts at road building are illegal but have failed to stop it.

A protest tent was set up recently in Artas to maintain a daily vigil and to monitor settler activity. The protest attracted Israeli peace activists, journalists and Palestinian politicians. Ta’mari told the Washington Report that the peaceful endeavor, held on Palestinian land, apparently proved to be too much for the settlers.

“One showed up in a pickup truck, followed by Israeli soldiers in a military jeep. The settler approached, examined the tent and then proceeded to tear it down. The soldiers stood by and said nothing. In fact, they seemed to be taking orders from the settler,” said Ta’mari.

“When the man upon whose land the tent was pitched objected, the settler claimed the tent was stolen from the army—which is untrue. I had purchased it myself from a well-known store...this was a clear act of harassment and provocation that took place with the tacit approval of the accompanying, silent soldiers.”

Ta’mari regularly takes activists, diplomats and reporters to the area to watch the armed settlers plowing under trees or removing rocks in preparation for placing their caravans on the land he says they “steal with impunity. From hilltops we see the tracks of their bulldozers, still fresh from where they gouged into Palestinian soil.”

Historic Archeological Site

Heading away from the Artas area about five miles southeast of Bethlehem, there is a conical summit resembling a volcano that can be seen from miles around. The “crater” is man-made and inside it lie the ruins of a magnificent fortified palace built by King Herod the Great. Known as Mount Herodian, this fabulous palace is another archeological treasure on Palestinian land controlled by Israel. Palestinians living in a community around the Mount, in an area known as Teqoa, are also besieged by Jewish settlement encroachment.

Several months ago, settler bulldozers rolled into the area to clear the land in their attempt to create a new settlement. Ta’mari and his colleagues established a peace camp in an effort to “fend off the efforts of settlers from a new settlement in this area to push Palestinians off their land in an obvious attempt to grab more territory to expand their new colony or create yet another one.”

On this particular occasion in mid-February, several dozen unarmed Palestinians were planting olive tree seedlings on their land—land that both the Israeli and Palestinian liaison officers had just days earlier agreed was indisputably Palestinian—when the settlers struck. Carrying rifles and accompanied by large dogs, the settlers converged on the villagers and physically tried to push them off their land.

Despite the fact that the Israeli army in the area had already acknowledged that this land was Palestinian and that the settler actions were illegal, the army moved in immediately to defend the armed settlers against the Palestinian farmers.

“That is Israeli policy...to protect settlers no matter how illegal their activity. And that is one of the reasons settlers are able to continue to expand in spite of protests from Palestinians, Israeli peace activists and much of the international community,” said Ta’mari.

Reminiscing about an aunt of his who lived in Artas when he was a boy, Ta’mari talked about how people from that time were so profoundly connected to the land, to their crops and to what the land meant for the future generations of their families. He wonders what the future holds now, at a time when many Palestinians are refugees or exiles and so many others are rapidly being made landless by Israeli land-confiscation policies.

“What of the Palestinian children who won’t have such land to care so deeply for, whose heritage will have been buried by these Israeli bulldozers?” Ta’mari asked. “What I want to know is can any human being do what the settlers are doing if they understand a Palestinian’s attachment to his land—and if they do, can one really call them human?”

Maureen Meehan is a free-lance journalist who covers the West Bank and Jerusalem.

SIDEBAR

Upheaval in Gaza

Rioting and clashes, killing two and injuring at least 80 people, erupted in early March in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah following a decision by the Palestinian state security courts to execute a 25-year-old man for the alleged murder of a Palestinian army officer. Two other men convicted of involvement in the crime were given life imprisonment and a 15-year prison sentence, respectively.

This death sentence is the second one issued in the past month. It follows the execution of a Palestinian army major who was accused of raping a six-year-old boy in Khan Younis, Gaza in February. The major first was convicted of the crime of rape and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Later, when riots broke out in Khan Younis over what people thought was too lenient a sentence, the man was then convicted of “influencing the public against the Palestinian National Authority.” That trial lasted less than an hour, and he was executed within two days.

In the current case, the three convicted men were either members or former members of Izzedin al-Qassam military wing of Hamas. According to some, they were on Israel’s wanted list and were slated to be handed over to Israel in accordance with the security arrangements made in the Wye River accord. Some believe they were involved in a number of operations in which Israeli soldiers and settlers may have been killed.

Following last year’s wide-reaching PNA crackdown on Hamas, a limited reconciliation ended in an agreement by the PNA to release some arrested Hamas members if they agreed to join the security services. The three convicted men are thought to have joined one of the many Palestinian security forces.

The sentencing of the three men, who many believe did not receive a fair trial, provoked rioting in Rafah. This led the police to randomly open fire, causing the demonstrators to pelt the Palestinian police with rocks and empty bottles.

Reporters covering the disturbances were detained and had their film taken from them.

Human rights groups, national and Islamic institutions, and some members of the Palestinian Legislative Council criticized the excessive use of force by the Palestinian security forces and demanded the cancellation of the state security courts and the implementation of civil law. Many called for the immediate abolition of the death penalty and asked President Arafat to not ratify the recent death sentence.

“The death penalty is an important issue in a nation seeking independence,” said a statement by the Palestinian Society for the Preservation of Human Rights and the Environment. “This is because the death penalty is an irreversible punishment from a fallible justice system. These executions are chilling because they indicate a lack of respect for the rule of law. If, in their efforts to create change, people focus only on the death penalty as a way to do so, there is a risk that the real dangers that exist in Palestinian society will remain unaddressed.”

Ismail Abu Shanab, one of Gaza’s leading Hamas figures, believes that the sentence has clear political motives. Abu Shanab does not believe that the three men committed the murder for which they were sentenced, and he called the handling of the situation by the Palestinian security forces “heavy-handed to the extreme.” —M.M.