Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, Page 31

The True Face of Terrorism

Eradication of a 3,000-Year-Old Palestinian Village

By Jane Adas

The early Zionists in Europe promoted Palestine as a land without people for a people without land. It was a myth, of course, but it is hard to avoid the suspicion that their modern-day Israeli successors are doing everything in their power to make it come true. The experience of one village serves to demonstrate the variety of methods the government of Israel has and continues to employ to encourage Palestinians to leave their land.

Beit Meersam is on the southwest border of Hebron district in the occupied West Bank, a rolling, rocky area pocked with caves. It is a village of such antiquity that it is mentioned in Egyptian writings as the place where a large jewel given to a princess was hidden. Early in this century an archeologist named Smith found the gem. The villagers have no idea what subsequently became of the jewel, but the largest cave is still called Mr. Smith's room.

In the midst of the village are the ruins of a Byzantine church. There are also reported to be Israelite, Roman and early Islamic artifacts in the area. Walid Abdullah Ali Amru, the mayor of Beit Meersam, suggests that this may be the reason the village seems to have been singled out for particularly hostile treatment.

In 1948, the village had a population of around 1,000. By the end of the 1948 war, as the border of the new state of Israel crept ever closer, many villagers found their lands on the wrong side of the armistice line. In the following years, there were many border clashes as Israel, in violation of the 1949 armistice agreement, prevented the villagers from cultivating their land. In 1952 Israelis killed five shepherds and two village women. After that, many of the villagers, having become landless, left for Hebron or nearby Dura.

By the time the June 1967 war broke out, the population had shrunk by 25 percent. Although there were only 15 Jordanian soldiers stationed in Beit Meersam, Israel Defense Forces heavily bombed the village of 750 people. Then, after they had occupied Beit Meersam, Israeli soldiers dynamited whatever remained standing.

In all, the Israelis destroyed 75 houses, the school, and the village's only tractor. The inhabitants were living in tents when the Swedish government offered to rebuild the village, but the Israeli government allowed only 30 one-room structures to be constructed—with Swedish money. Since then, more families have moved away, leaving a present population of only 200.

Life is bleak for those who remain. The village today has no roads, no school, no electricity, and no running water.

Um Yusef's sister, a village matriarch, was killed in the 1967 bombardment and her infant daughter badly wounded. Um Yusef raised her sister's nine children as her own. Her extended family today includes 22 people. Two years ago, heartened by the Oslo peace process, the women in the family sold their gold in order to add two rooms to their one-room house. Last February, the Israeli Civil Administration notified the family members that they were required to obtain a permit for the addition. Such permits are expensive, entailing surveyors', lawyers', and application fees, which are non-refundable, whether or not the permit is granted.

The only work in the village is agricultural, but members of Um Yusef's family no longer are able to farm their more than 30 dunums of land, because in the past few months the government of Israel has unilaterally, and without notice (and without any U.S. media coverage) extended its borders several kilometers northward. According to the Israeli government, the family's farmland now is within the state of Israel.

The beneficiaries of the quiet confiscation of Beit Meersam's agricultural lands are the only settler family in the vicinity, which just happen to be that of Israeli Minister of Infrastructure Ariel Sharon's son-in-law.

The villagers attempted to continue working their land secretly at night in order to feed their families. But, in April, Israeli soldiers sprayed their wheat crop with herbicides, destroying most of it. Then, in early May, the military bulldozed Beit Meersam's cemetery. Israeli jeeps have even arrived to uproot trees in order to build a "nature preserve."

Um Yusef's family recently learned that their application to add two rooms to their one-room house has been turned down because they no longer have sufficient agricultural land on which to build, and because they are in Israeli-controlled Area C, where no Arab is permitted to build. Area C constitutes 70 percent of the West Bank.

Now Um Yusef's is one of 15 families in Beit Meersam who were notified in June that their homes are to be demolished. The Israeli government has offered no alternative accommodations. The villagers have appealed the decision through the legal system, but this, too, is costly, and unlikely to accomplish anything except to delay the destruction. When that day comes, the ancient Palestinian village of Beit Meersam will be extinct.