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.”
