CPTnet
27 August 2007
HEBRON: Stealing home

by Kathie Uhler

In late July, CPTers Esther Kern and Kathie Uhler went to nearby Wadi
Al-Ghroos to visit and find a family with whom Uhler could stay to increase
her Arabic proficiency. Wadi Al-Ghroos is a small beleaguered farming
village to the east of Hebron, sandwiched between two Israeli settlements:
Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha Harsina. The settlers have been confiscating the
lands of Wadi Al-Ghroos to unite the two settlements.

While they were walking in the Wadi, they met a man who asked them to come
to a single-room home near the fence at the Harsina settlement. This home,
he said, belonged to his great-grandfather and, in its present form, is
sixty-five-years-old. Mohammad said he has the documents of ownership from
Ottoman times. At his invitation, the CPTers walked around to the home,
where Mohammad showed the CPTers posts where settlers had routed a fence to
enclose his home within the Harsina settlement.

After Palestinian, Israeli (notably, Peace Now), and other international
outcries, the Israelis rerouted the fence to keep the home out of the
settlement. The settlement sewage system remains, however, along the former
fence route with cement-capped vertical pipes about a yard in diameter
protruding every ten yards or so. One can hear and smell wastewater rushing
by through the buried pipelines.

Mohammad said an Israeli settler from Harsina has been living in his home.
The settler moved in after his grandmother ceased living there because of
Israeli settler and soldier harassment. Mohammad was in prison for seven
years during this period in the 1990s, he related, and so was not able to
prevent the takeover. He showed where the settler had padlocked the door
shut. Mohammad then broke off the padlock. Inside, the CPTers saw a large
pile of wooden frames that the settler had stored there as proof of
occupancy. A mattress, leaning haphazardly against a wall, was the only
other recognizable item. Outside, the settler had beaten a path to the
small kitchen building.

Then the Israeli claiming ownership drove up. He and Mohammad had a long
conversation, after which they shook hands, and the settler drove off.
Mohammad said, "The man told me he has evidence of ownership of the land and
building. He said that I should take my ownership papers to a judge in Beit
El (near Ramallah) and let the judge decide whose property it is." Kern
complimented Mohammad on his dignified demeanor during the conversation with
the settler. He then told the CPTers that he said to the settler, "You have
guns, you have courts, you have the army; but we have God."

The CPTers told Mohammad to phone them if they could be of any assistance.
Recently, Uhler spoke with Mohammad, who confirmed that he is pursuing the
course suggested by the Israeli squatter and waiting to receive papers from
the DCO (District Coordinating Officer) to take to a judge.

Click on this link for CPT photos of this visit:
http://www.cpt.org/gallery/Stealing-home-in-Wadi-Al-Ghroos