One Palestinian's Lonely Stand

By Frank Collins and Jan Abu Shakrah

We have known Sabri Ghuraib since the time he met with us to ask our help eight years ago, and we have visited him several times at his pleasant home on a knoll in the West Bank village of Ijza, 10 miles northwest of Jerusalem. Despite the pleasant setting, however, there was always an atmosphere of tension there because Jewish settlers from the nearby Givon Hadashah settlement were trying to take over his 25 acres of farmland.

When one of us (Frank Collins) again visited Sabri Ghuraib's home three years ago, however, he was scarcely prepared for the devastation that he saw. The windows of the stone and concrete house had been smashed, and everything in the house had been completely vandalized.

Every piece of furniture had been savaged beyond repair. All the clothing from the closets and drawers had been dumped on the floor and trampled. Even the television set had been completely gutted, its screen broken and its electronics scattered on the floor.

The devastation was the result of a midnight raid by the Givon Hadashah settlers and by Israeli army soldiers, although each group denies that it participated. There was no one to defend the house because, as both the settlers and the soldiers knew, Sabri was in prison for trying to tear down the barbed wire fence that the settlers previously had erected around the property, leaving only a narrow entrance path to the house. Because of earlier harassment, Sabri's family was staying with neighbors across the street, two large families doubled up in the same small house.

Nor was that the last devastating attack on Sabri's home and its furnishings. Several more took place in the following two years. The settlers were trying very hard to force Sabri and his family to leave their home and land.

After his release from prison, Sabri, together with his wife and two oldest sons, were fined the Israeli equivalent of $9,250 for removing "security barriers" (the fence). The $250 fine assessed against Sabri's wife was paid, but Sabri, a poor farmer, has not been able to pay off the remaining $9,000. In March of this year, the police commissioner, accompanied by an army unit, came to inform Sabri that he and his two sons must pay up or go to prison.

For the past 14 years, Sabri and his family have been fighting, both on their land and in the Israeli courts, to save the farm that the family has owned for generations. Sabri still possesses deeds for the property. They predate World War I, going back to the Ottoman empire, and are supplemented by additional papers from the eras of British (1917-1948) and Jordanian (1948-1967) rule.

Sabri's problems began in 1979, when the settlers of Givon Hadashah decided that they needed some of his land on which to build water tanks. He refused to sell, whereupon one acre was confiscated by the Israeli authorities.

Following this, the joint Palestinian/Israeli "Committee Confronting the Iron Fist" undertook to help Sabri in his resistance to the threatened confiscation of more of his land. It was decided to develop the remaining 24 acres of his land for more intensive agriculture to help make up for the loss of the land that had been confiscated. Such upgrading might also strengthen Sabri against the charge that the land was abandoned, a common Israeli pretext used in court to justify the confiscation of Palestinian land.

A bulldozer was hired for stone removal and terracing, but only after some difficulty, because of threats by the settlers against the commercial bulldozer owners. On the day appointed for the work (a Saturday, so that Sabri's Jewish supporters could be present), a group of members of the committee came to help to clear the land. They were halted by armed settlers. The confrontation was heated, and one of the writers of this article was pursued by the settlers for taking photographs. Although the settlers did not fire their guns, the bulldozer operator was so thoroughly intimidated that he gave up the job on the spot, leaving his bulldozer behind for later retrieval.

The settlers then simply took possession, without even the fig leaf of a court order, of six acres of Sabri's land, allegedly to build a new access road. They established their claim by laying coils of barbed wire around the land that they had taken. This literally cut off the access of the Ghoraib family to their own well, water pump and outdoor privy. At night, when Sabri's family tried to sleep, the settlers drove heavy trucks inside the barbed wire enclosure adjacent to the house, loudly cursing the family. Eventually, the settlers physically assaulted Sabri and one of his sons, who required hospitalization for his injuries.

Apparently coincidentally, Sabri's oldest son, Samir, was shot to death by a Palestinian collaborator around the same time. Samir had joined local villagers to mediate between the collaborator and Palestinians suspected of killing the collaborator's son. The collaborator took aim and shot at one of the Palestinian suspects, but the bullet hit Samir in the head. As is often the case under the occupation, the collaborator was not arrested or even questioned.

Predictably, the gunpoint take-over of the six acres subsequently was sustained by an Israeli occupation confiscation order that declared the disputed six acres was "state land." In the context of Israeli law, "state land" does not mean public land. It means that the land may be used exclusively by Jewish settlers, with the original Palestinian owners treated as trespassers. Sabri contested the confiscation of his land in an appeal to the High Court of Israel. The court rejected his appeal, and assessed a fine of $1,500 against him for filing it. Since he was unable to pay the fine, he was jailed. Finally, after he had been in prison for several days, a friend raised the money to pay the fine. A year ago, after the Ghoraib home had been vandalized several more times, the settlers erected a huge water tank on the confiscated land directly behind Sabri's home. They took the occasion once again to smash all of the windows of his house, again forcing the family to leave. Sabri and his family moved back this spring, after raising enough money for the repairs. Early this spring, the settlers started marking the ground around Sabri's house in preparation for the building of new single-family villas with gardens talked about in the Givon Hadashah settlement bulletin several years ago. The occupation authorities have informed Sabri's lawyer that the settlers have no building license, and that the settlers' actions on the land are illegal. However, the bulldozers have continued to work on and off, under army protection.

On June 2 of this year, Sabri was arrested again, following a new confrontation with the settlers. Sabri and his grandchildren threw stones, the settlers shot over their heads and Sabri was taken to the Ramallah prison compound. His lawyer has been informed that the bail for Sabri's release this time has been set at $700.

Longstanding Harassment

Sabri's misfortunes, which are by no means unusual, began long before the intifada. Other West Bank farmers who have had the singular courage to resist confiscation of their land have suffered similar harassment and physical intimidation while they sought relief through the court system. In fact, fewer than 1 in 20 of the Palestinian litigants have won their cases in Israeli courts.

Even then, successful litigants have found that winning a court case merely delayed the process of confiscation. New rulings by the occupation authorities under one pretext or another, accompanied by settler harassment, have presented the farmers with such insuperable obstacles that, in the end, they have been unable to support the high costs of continued legal proceedings. It is therefore hardly surprising that most farmers simply acquiesce when their land is threatened with confiscation.

Sabri Ghuraib is a notable exception. His courageous determination, at such a grim personal cost, to preserve his home and land that has been in his family for generations, has offered him support from a number of Israeli, Palestinian and foreign solidarity groups. In addition, several embassies and consulates have made representations to the occupation authorities and to the Israeli government over the case. So far, however, nothing has stopped the settlers, their bulldozers, and their Israeli army protectors from depriving him of his land, his house, his possessions and his freedom, one theft at a time.

Frank Collins is a regular contributor to the Washington Report. Jan Abu Shakrah is the director of the Palestinian Human Rights Information Center in Jerusalem.