CPTnet
15 March 2011
HEBRON: Settlers take one more piece of land in Al-Bweireh

by Paulette Schroeder

On 25 February 2010, CPTers observed a bulldozer leveling the land on a Palestinian- owned hilltop in the small village of Al Bweireh.  The settlers from Outpost 86 and from Harsina Settlement have been walking or driving through the Palestinian neighborhood every Friday to pray at the top of this hill, because, they say, a settler had been killed on this hill a number of years ago.

Two security guards from the settlement were engineering the area, indicating about one dunum for the bulldozer to level.  After CPTers asked to see the official permission to level this land for the settlers, the Israeli security guard showed a yellow scrap of paper with a paragraph written in Hebrew.  When one CPTer insisted the paper was not an official document, the security guard made no effort to deny it.

After observing for an hour, CPT asked three people from the village to tell them the history of the hilltop.  The three said that Mr. Sultan from the village owned the land now but he bought it from a group of women in the Teachers’ Union who wanted to build houses on the hill.   When the Givat Ha Harsina settlement was built in the 1980s, the women were then forbidden to go to the hill.   Consequently, they sold it to Mr. Sultan whose grandfather had originally owned the land.   Mr. Sultan pleaded the case before the lower Military Court who said they could not help him.  He therefore took the case to the Military High Court who sent him back to the lower court.   Now he is unsure what  might still possibly help.  He told CPTers, “We know everything, but we can’t do anything.…  The settlers come and do what they want.”