The local residents of Jayyous and Falamiya villages east of Qalqiliya in the West Bank complain of Israel’s persistence in seizing more of their own agricultural lands and depriving them of using them.
A few days before the Land Day occasion which is observed on March 30 the Israeli occupation army announced its appropriation of lands belonging to villagers from Jayyous and Falamiya.
In fact the Land Day has opened the old wounds of both villages especially Jayyous whose lands have become mostly isolated by Israel’s separation wall.
This wall has made Jayyous villagers like prisoners unable to have access to their agricultural lands except through a gate guarded by Israeli soldiers
“Two-thirds of the village’s lands are located behind the apartheid wall and we can only access them through a gate” a local resident told the Palestinian Information Center (PIC).
“169 dunums of those lands had been seized four years ago under a military order fenced and arbitrarily cleared of their trees” the villager added.
“Zufin settlement (founded in 1989) is encroaching at the expense of Jayyous and Falamiya lands and they seemingly want us to go through a stage of forgetting our lands behind the segregation wall after the situation becomes a fait accompli” he elaborated.
“6000 dunums of land is only accessible to us at specific times through a gate holding number 935 in the presence of all forms of obstacles” he said.
Legal battle
A few years ago villagers from Jayyous fought a legal battle and managed to have the route of the separation wall altered and restore 2450 dunums of land; however 6000 dunums are still isolated by the Israeli concrete fence.
“Regardless of how complicated the occupation’s land access measures are this land will remain ours and all obstructions by the occupation will not prevent us from entering it constructing it or cultivating it” farmer Ahmed Khreishah told the PIC.
