Al -Tira Village in the West Bank .. A settlement that no one hears policy

Ramallah- Not Bus station official It is expected, before nine in the morning, to see a new face in the station that asks him about the bird’s buses, to the extent that he automatically answered the “service (taxi) heading to the bird there”, then he is surprised by the response from the questioner: the village, not the live bird.

Thus, the name of the neighborhood, which grew up in the middle of the last century west of Ramallah, in the center of the West Bank, has been overwhelmed by the village that the Palestinians have inhabited for more than 300 years, and which has witnessed recently an escalation of settlers’ attacks on its farmers and lands.

After the Malto Road wrapping between the western mountains of Ramallah and Al -Bireh Governorate, the bus arrived at the village, and like any village in Palestine, it is sufficient as a guest to tell the bus driver that you will go down at the house of so -and -so from the people, to connect you, and so are the features of the village.

Barter and violations

At the entrance to the house that we meant, we received an inscription on a stone, indicating the date of construction in 1979, and behind the door is a world of plants, embroidery and birds, telling that you are entering the house of Palestinian farmers, and there was Yahya Salama, the Palestinian farmer was receiving us.

In the last 25 years, Salama completely emptied to reclaim his land and cultivate it in his village, where he has been cultivating figs, grapes, vegetables and fruits and selling them in the Ramallah markets, but his arrival today to his land has become a real risk in light of a new escalating settlement practiced by the settlers of shepherds on the lands of the village, preventing their owners reaching it by threatening weapons.

“Every time I go to the ground, within minutes the settlers come and sit and start my question and photograph my car, and they come with dozens of cows and a number of guard dogs and threaten us that this whole land for them and we should not return to it, and now it is forbidden to reach it, look from far and cry at this age,” Salama says to Al Jazeera Net.

It indicates that these settlers come from the focus they set up on one of the village hills, to monitor it and other peasants on how they work on the ground.

Product

In the last risk of safety in going to his land with his brother and his brother’s daughter two weeks ago, he found that the settlers had fully stole the grape crop, and he found on the trees only the remnants of Qutouf is not good, while in previous years he was producing and selling and selling grapes.

As well as the share of his neighbors and friends from gifts from the crop every year, while it is still unclear whether his family and his family will be able to reach the ground for the olive crop during October, where he has the integrity of 150 fruitful trees that he is no longer able to reach.

“On one occasion, 5 young men from the village were in their land in an attempt to protect it from the settlers, a settler wearing the military army uniform and claimed that he was a soldier, arrested them and handed them over to the police in the Modiin settlement, so that it became clear that he was not a soldier but rather a disguised settlement, so they beat them and told them not to return to the ground.”

He adds that the occupation army recently stormed the village, accompanied by the “Nature Protection Unit”, and detained two young men from the village working in a zoo inside it, then confiscated all the animals and withdrew.

Salama and his family live on a daily concern that they are fully prevented from reaching their land, especially since the settlers who are spreading in the village’s lands deliberately intimidate every Palestinian who goes to his land.

And before our meeting with safety, one of his neighbors had told him that the settlers had besieged him on the ground and began to ask him about the Koshan of the land (the papers of ownership) and they said to him that this land for them and he should not return to it.

Between forbidden and risks

To the southwest of the city of Ramallah, the village of Al -Tira is located, or as people say to discrimination: Tirah Beit Awar, where its natural extension is connected to the villages northwest of Jerusalem, such as the Ist of Dakto and Beit Annan and others.

This played a role in shaping economic and social ties between the village and these villages in the past decades, Before arrival – through the mountains – to these villages is fraught with the dangers posed by the settlers scattered along these mountains, as well as the army patrols that oversee the expansion of the Zaeif settlement, northwest of Jerusalem, which are now expanding on the lands of the village of Al -Tirah.

The village overlooks the settlement road known as 443 Street, which links Jerusalem in Tel Aviv, through the Modiin settlement, and this street was the main for the residents of Al -Tira and the villages of southwest of Ramallah adjacent to it, before the occupation issued a decision to prevent them from using it from 2002 until today, and forcing them to use alternative roads wrapped between villages.

The occupation also confiscated lands belonging to the village of Al -Tirah and the surrounding villages to split these alternative roads within the project, which is known as “the fabric of life”, and did not carry more than its name, as these roads were made with low standards that led to the collapse of parts of the street between Beit Awar, Al -Tira and Betonia due to the abundance of rain several years ago.

As for the bottom of the street, there are “water phrases) of water that students and professors are forced to cross from them to reach the village school around which the Beit Houron settlement wraps, as they are not allowed to walk in the street or use it to reach the school.

The data of the Palestinian Statistics Center for the year 2017 indicates that the population of the bird residing in it is 1504 breezes, and the enumeration of expatriates in the United States is estimated at about 3 thousand people, while the total area of ​​the village lands is about 3971 dunums (dunum a thousand square meters), of which 353 dunums are the building surface.

Dozens of residential units and agricultural facilities are located in the village within the demolition areas, and their owners have received notifications of demolition in the past years.